International Journal of Language & Literature

The Coupling of Strange Bedfellows (?): Stylistics as Link between Linguistics and Literature
Veronico Nogales Tarrayo

Abstract
This paper is an attempt at closely examining the place of stylistics in literary interpretation. The writer believes that language alone leads to a mechanical (or soulless) interpretation of a literary text, and a literary criticism solely based on the critic’s intuition does not hold much water (Cañares, 2002). Thus, stylistics, the branch of linguistics which studies the style of texts, mainly literature, emerged as a framework that intersperses the fields of linguistics and literary criticism, serving as a crucial link between these two complementary disciplines. In addition, the paper addresses issues that have been raised for and against literary experts and linguists in relation to stylistics. And to prove that stylistics is relevant to literature, one interesting short story titled “Midsummer” by a renowned Filipino author, Manuel E. Arguilla, was analyzed using the schema devised by Leech and Short (1981), particularly the lexical and grammatical categories. Pedagogical implications for teaching literature are also discussed in this paper.

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