Course Aims & Outline

What type of course is Ling 131: Language and Style?
What aspects of language does Language and Style cover?
What are the aims of the course?
What prior knowledge of literature and language do I need to have?
What will I learn?
What's my role?
What is the course outline?
Is there a course book?
What will the sessions be like?
How much time should I devote to each session?
Am I expected to work on my own?
How will I be assessed?
What do I do next?

(1) To teach you a set of analytical TOOLS from the "stylistician's toolkit" that you can use to examine texts (for example, their words, sounds, structures, or interactive aspects).

(2) To encourage you to use those tools on additional texts, both during and after the sessions, so that you learn by doing.

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What prior knowledge of literature and language do I need to have?

We will assume that you have no knowledge of language study or particular literary texts, so any you do have will be a bonus! We do expect you to be interested in literature and want to study the language of texts.

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What will I learn?

Throughout the course, you will learn different aspects of how to analyse the language of texts. You will learn about particular aspects of the structure of English (e.g. grammatical, sound and conversational structure), at points where it is of particular relevance to the texts you happen to be studying at the time.

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What's my role?

You're expected to be an active participant, preferably working alongside other students, especially when it comes to analysing text extracts. We also want you to experiment with the tools you learn each session, by practising on additional texts.

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What is the course outline?

The course consists of ten topics (sub-divided into sessions), which represent three distinct blocks of poetry, prose fiction and drama:

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Is there a course book?

Yes. The course book is:

SHORT, Mick (1996) Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, (Longman).
We will also make use of:

1. LEECH, G.N. & SHORT, M.H. (1981) Style in Fiction, (Longman).

2. FOWLER, R. (1996 [1986])) Linguistic Criticism, (OUP)

In addition, you will be directed to other readings as the term unfolds.

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What will the sessions be like?

Each session will have the same "menu" format - you should work your way down the topics in the Menu (situated on the left of your screen) in the order in which they are listed, the arrow at the end of each page will take you to the next page. Each session will start with a session overview and finish with a summary. As you work through the menu you also need to look at the sound and video clips you come across, and try the tasks and self-tests that we have set.

Printing pages from the site is not always accurate so for each topic we have provided some printer friendly notes. These can be accessed using either the link at the bottom of the session overview for each topic or the link from the main contents page.

There are some special symbols used throughout the site which we outlined in the basics section. If you skipped this section it would be a good idea to look familiarise yourself with these symbols before starting your first session.

If there is anything you don't understand, or if you get stuck or lost, please ask. Students at Lancaster will be able to ask the tutor supervising their sessions. Those outside Lancaster can ask their local tutors, or, if necessary send any queries they may have to the following email address: m.short@lancaster.ac.uk

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How much time should I devote to each session?

We are assuming that you will spend a total of 5-6 hours on each session, which includes work done at the screen-face, reading time and also time to complete tasks and reading. The recommended reading for each topic can be found by clicking on the 'READINGS' link, which can be found in the 'USEFUL LINKS' section of the menu (on the left-hand side of the screen) for each topic of the course.

There is a 'suggested' week by week course schedule for Lancaster students.

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Am I expected to work on my own?

We'd prefer you to work at the computer in groups of 2 or 3, so that you can discuss with fellow students the information given to you and the tasks set for you as you go along. We think you can learn a lot from others doing the course as well as from your tutors.

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How will I be assessed

To some degree, this will vary depending upon whether you're a student of Lancaster University or whether you're doing the course in some other educational institution.

Assessment for Lancaster students will be in two parts:

You will be expected (i) to submit a piece of written coursework at the end of the course, and (ii) to take an exam at the end of the year. However, as you will probably not have done stylistic analysis before, we have introduced a self-assessment facility in each session, so that you can try out the analytical skills you have just learnt on 3 texts (a poem, an extract from a novel and an extract from a play) as you go along. You can then compare your efforts on the 3 texts, for each session, with model answers. This will help you to build up your sense of how to do a full stylistic analysis of a text from each genre as you go through the course, and thus prepare yourself thoroughly for the actual assessment at the end of the course.

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What do I do next?

Now that you're familiar with the course structure, you're ready to begin the first session. Students at Lancaster will begin the session in Week 1.

You can take a look at a brief history of stylistics and how it all began or go straight to the Course Contents.

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