Stylistics: Using Linguistics to Explore Texts and Meaning (FutureLearn)

Stylistics: Using Linguistics to Explore Texts and Meaning (FutureLearn)

Gain insights into political speeches, beautiful poetry, and everything in between as you take a deep dive into stylistics. Uncover the real meaning behind the words you read and hear with stylistics
Stylistics is the study of linguistic style in texts. It helps to explain how politicians mislead; how novelists and poets move their readers; how advertisers persuade us to buy their products and how the media influence public opinion. Stylistics empowers students to become critical readers by developing rigorous techniques of linguistic analysis.

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Academically, stylistics sits at the interface between many other disciplines, including Literary Studies, Linguistics, History, Politics, Sociology and Psychology. If you’d like to learn more, this four-week course from the University of Huddersfield is the perfect way to begin your stylistics journey.
See stylistics in action across different situations
By examining the language choices that are made in different contexts, you’ll be able to develop your critical reading ability. Armed with these skills, you’ll be able to analyse and interpret the daily messages you receive from every sphere of your life.
Hone your stylistic analysis skills
By the end of this course, you’ll be able to identify stylistic devices, understand how language choices attract our attention, and compare the speech patterns of different people.
You’ll also know how to perform corpus stylistics, using simple computer analysis of textual patterns and interpreting their relation to a speaker or writer’s style and effect.
Learn from leading linguistics experts
With its established track record in corpus stylistics, stylistic analysis, and other areas related to this field, this course from the University of Huddersfield is the perfect place to study this fascinating branch of linguistics.
You’ll learn how to identify stylistic devices, foregrounding, and characterisation, and gain invaluable insight into everything you read or hear!

Syllabus

Week 1: Foregrounding
Week 2: Characterisation
Week 3: Speech presentation
Week 4: Corpus stylistics

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