A Discourse-Based View in Interdisciplinary Approaches to Fictional Text Analysis

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Abstract

As patterns of communication change in a globalized society, literacy in foreign languages, especially English, becomes an issue of ever growing relevance to all those involved in the educational system, not to mention those who are to learn all their life long. As such, the goal of this article is to discuss how EFLit (English as a Foreign Literature) students can gain in both linguistic competence and critical awareness thereof, should their teachers/lecturers abide to a discourse-based view on (literary) language and approach the selected texts by following a pedagogical stylistics orientation also drawing eclectically on pragmatics and other areas of knowledge within the broader domain of applied linguistics. Here under focus will be a discussion of the topics on which literary and linguistic studies show greatest potential for (theoretical) convergence and, above all, combined applications in lecture setting. Crucially, it will be argued that a pedagogical stylistics approach to EFLit teaching/learning both develops students’ linguistic competence and raises their awareness as to the meaning making potential of language in use in the texts at hand as well as in their larger historical and sociocultural settings. This will be illustrated by highlighting some textual features within a short extract of Fred D’Aguiar’s The Longest Memory (1995) and the linguistic competence that its comprehension would demand from students.

About the authors

Alcina Sousa

University of Madeira

Email: alcina.sousa@staff.uma.pt
Colégio dos Jesuítas, Rua dos Ferreiros, 9000-082 Funchal, Portugal

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