Critical Stylistics: the Power of English

International Journal of Language Studies Volume 7, Number 3, July 2013, pp. 137-140 Book Review Jeffries, Lesley. (2010). Critical stylistics: The power of English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. [202 pp; ISBN: 978-0-333-96449-1 (paperback)]. Lesley Jeffries’s 1 Critical Stylistics: The Power of English is concerned with the power of English text and talk—indeed primarily with text as the bulk of examples in the book suggest. The author draws on a wide array of examples covering newspaper, corporate, political and legal registers as well as conventional language use and even invented examples in order to explicate the construction of ideological content in different types of text. The book is intended for an audience of students and beginning critical stylistics analysts and aims to provide them with “specific tools of analysis to get a clear sense of how texts may influence the ideological outlook of their recipients” (p. 6, [original emphasis]). Jeffries argues that ideological content, innocent as well as manipulative, is threaded through linguistic structure and in this book she offers her audience a set of analytical tools to help them discover where ideology lies. She is quick to warn, however, that this is not a quick guide to textual ideology and acknowledges the role of background schemata in informing the impact of the text on the reader. Jeffries’ exploration of the language-power is in fact an extension of a research orientation initiated by Fowler et al. (1979). What Jeffries claims to be adding to this growing body of literature is a “set of tool” different from the “more traditional tools such as transitivity and modality” (p. 15). The attempt to provide a set of tools to expose insidious ideological content is not altogether new (cf., Fairclough, 1989; Fowler, 1991; Simpson, 1993). Jeffries places her attempt well in this tradition and argues that her book fills a methodological void in the literature. Fairclough’s list of tools is selective, “incomplete” and therefore falls short of providing a coherent methodology (p. 12). Fowler’ five-tool list is “supposed to be a methodology” (p. 12) but is 1 Lesley Jeffries, a former Chair of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), has a PhD in stylistics from Leeds University. She has authored six books in linguistics and co-authored three others since 1993. Her most prominent contributions to the area of stylistics include Stylistics (2010) and Teaching Stylistics (2011), both coauthored with Dan McIntyre, and of course the book under review. ISSN: 2157-4898; EISSN: 2157-4901 © 2013 IJLS; Printed in the USA by Lulu Press Inc. 138 G. S. Alaghbary “lacking in comprehensive coverage of linguistic features” (p. 13) while Simpson’s is a “more satisfying methodology” yet still inadequate on similar grounds (p. 14). The need for a more coherent, more ‘comprehensive’ methodology and for an approach to study in purely linguistic terms the mechanisms by which ideology is interwoven into linguistic choice is the impetus for Critical Stylistics. The book is in the Perspectives on the English Language series and is organized into eleven chapters. The first chapter is introductory and sets the scene for yet another book on the dynamics of language and power. The remaining ten chapters correspond to the ten analytical tools proposed. Each chapter introduces one tool (or function) and the textual ways in which this function is realized for ideological effect. The chapters are structured in line with the pedagogical perspective of the book, and of course the series. Each chapter has six subheadings: an introduction providing an overview of the chapter’s main thesis, a discussion of the textual carriers of the function together with annotated examples from different sources, a discussion of the form-function mapping in the chapter, a summary of the ideological effects triggered by the particular textual features, a set of exercises for the reader to analyze in a similar way (a commentary on these exercises is provided in the appendix), and a list of relevant literature for further reading. Critical Stylistics has a widening circle of concern, beginning with lexical alternatives, widening up to cover structural and meaning-making resources, and ending on the construction of conceptual worlds. Chapters two through six examine how the lexical, syntactic and semantic resources of English could be mobilized to package up/slant information with ideological consequences; chapter seven investigates the pragmatic force of textual choice and the potential effect of implicit propositions on reader ideology; chapters eight and nine explore the power of texts to construct hypothetical text worlds for the audience to believe, desire or fear; and the last two chapters of the book shift the focus from representing the ‘world’ in linguistic form to representing others’ speech/thoughts and the construction, as well as manipulation, of the discourse deictic field, and examining the persuasive force of these phenomena. The book suggests ten textual functions, the lexical carriers of these functions and the possible ideological effects of each. Jeffries chooses to offer functions in the participle form to avoid the technicality of the linguistic features popular in the literature of CL and CDA (e.g., hypothesizing vs. modality). Though the original discussion of the functions and their textual carriers is in large traceable to other sources (Chilton, 2004; Davies, 2008; Fairclough, 1989; Fowler, 1991; Grice, 1975; Halliday, 1985; Jeffries, 2007; Jeffries, 2009; Simpson, 1993), the book is commendable for the extensive discussion, International Journal of Language Studies, 7(3), 137-140 detailed analysis and lucid presentation within the confines of a single book of arguments that might otherwise have remained disjointed and ‘incoherent’. In addition to contributing at least one extra tool of analysis to the literature, Jeffries gives shape, and perhaps name, to an existing, albeit fragmented, set of tools for the critical analysis of texts. The discussion of the ten tools of analysis often overlaps (e.g., implying with prioritizing, naming with prioritizing, and negation with implicature) but the overlap is a normal consequence of the fuzziness of boundaries in language categories in general. The overlap potential is also a resource which producers of discourse fall back on for ideological influence, and Jeffries could have explored this potential further. The discussion is also at times underdeveloped (e.g., exemplifying and enumerating, and negation) in comparison to the better laid out functions of naming and describing, prioritizing, and implying and assuming. Critical Stylistics promises to equip students and beginning critical stylistics analysts with a toolkit of analytical apparatus for investigating textual ideologies. The well laid-out linguistic introduction to each function, the wide coverage of tools, and the wealth of annotated examples from various registers all combine to fulfill the book’s promise. Reviewed by Gibreel Sadeq ALAGHBARY San Diego State University, USA The Author Gibreel Sadeq Alaghbary (Email: [email protected]), an assistant professor of stylistics at Taiz University, Yemen, is currently a post-doctoral fellow and adjunct faculty at San Diego State University, USA. He holds a PhD in pedagogical stylistics and his research interests include critical stylistics, critical discourse analysis, contrastive rhetoric, feminist criticism and translatability. References Chilton, P. (2004). Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice. London: Routledge. Davies, M. (2008). The attraction of opposites: The ideological function of conventional and created oppositions in the construction of in-groups and 139 140 G. S. Alaghbary out-groups in news texts (Unpublished PhD Dissertation). Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield. Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. London: Longman. Fowler, R. (1991). Language in the news: Discourse and ideology in the press. London: Routledge. Fowler, R., Hodge, B., Kress, G., & Trew, T. (1979). Language and Control. London: Routledge. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and Conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts, (pp. 41-58). New York: Academic Press. Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold. Jeffries, L. (2007). Textual construction of the female body. A critical discourse approach. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jeffries, L. (2009). Opposites in discourse. London: Continuum. Simpson, P. (1993). Language, ideology and point of view. London: Routledge. Simpson, P., & Mayr, A. (2010). Language and power: A resource book for students. Abingdon: Routledge.