The Pragmatics of Style

This book clarifies and exemplifies how pragmatic considerations are relevant to any study of style and stylistics, in the conviction that pragmastylistics is more interesting and useful than stylistics on its own. There are two separate levels of study: one, a general, methodical and scientific discipline; the other, an application of its methods or postulates to the analysis of the ‘style’ of a specific utterance, text, speaker, writer, movement or period. It is clear that, in order to approach either, we must first attempt to understand style.