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RR 2016/121 The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics Edited by Michael Burke Routledge London and New York 2014 xviii + 540 pp. ISBN 978 0 415 52790 3 (print); ISBN 978 1 315 79553 1 (e-book); £150 $240 Routledge Handbooks
Keywords Guides and handbooks, Linguistics, Stylistics
Review DOI 10.1108/RR-03-2016-0074
The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics is a complete and comprehensive introduction to the field of contemporary stylistics. Often called "literary linguistics", stylistics is the study and analysis of texts, although historically it has focused primarily on literary text. And indeed the roots of stylistics can be found in classical poetics, especially rhetoric, as they were studied in the ancient world. However, with time, the focus of researchers has broadened to include a variety of texts.
Contemporary stylistics, as the volume's editor reminds us (p. 2) "goes far beyond the rhetoric, poetics, formalism and functionalism of the past to embrace corpus, critical, cognitive, pedagogical, pragmatic, gender, multimodal and, most recently, neuroscientific approaches". This is why this volume would be a welcome addition on the shelves in a number of subject areas of any library.
The Handbook is specifically aimed at researchers, undergraduates and postgraduates working in this interesting and, by its very nature, multidisciplinary field. A very interesting and useful feature at this volume is that in the editor's intention, it should work both as a reference tool and as a textbook; most of all, it should function as a "how-to-do" tool. For this reason, it will be of use to those familiar with the field and those approaching it for the very first time. Its intended and potential readership is, therefore, potentially very broad, at undergraduate and at graduate level not forgetting, of course, any interested reader.
This handbook is divided into four major sections and 32 chapters, each written by a specialist in the field. They deal with topics and approaches that will guide the reader from the very beginning of stylistics to its present and, arguably, its future. The chapter covers topics such as: cognitive neuroscience and classical rhetoric. Some of the core issues covered by the contributors include the following:...