The first step towards a detailed stylistic analysis of a text is to consider the specialist terminology of literary criticism that is unique to the literary tradition of the language A you are studying as an SSST student.
The main purpose of this terminology is to help you:
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recognize and label the elements (or author’s choices) that make literature “literary” as opposed to descriptive or informational
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explain how these elements or choices affect you, the reader, and your understanding of the text, the writer’s style and its larger purpose or global impact
Each language and its literature has a literary vocabulary that is unique, so you should search for and become familiar with the list of terms appropriate to the study of the literature of your language A. Lists of literary terms could be found on the internet, or they may be something your tutor can help you access.
Literary terms are important because they enable ideas to be expressed about patterns you will learn to recognize in your Book List, although not all of them will apply to every work.
- Sound patterns: how words create “sound effects” that help you create meaning
- Rhythmic/metrical patterns: how words might follow or violate an underlying beat or pulse
- Image patterns: how words create “pictures” that shift and change, perhaps becoming a symbol
- Visual/spatial patterns: how the visual appearance of the words on the page, especially poetry, impacts meaning
- Syntactical patterns: how the words follow or violate traditional grammatical rules
- Patterns of denotation and connotation: how different meanings of the same word might impact interpretation and possibly create ambiguity
- Patterns of punctuation: how punctuation affects the meaning of the words around them
- Patterns of sentence structure: how sentence construction, such as short, long, or complex, impacts the way a character or narrator’s voice is perceived
- Patterns of stanza structure: in poetry, how the structure of a poem into discrete units of text shapes its meaning
- Patterns of conflict: how conflicts are introduced, developed, resolved, or left unresolved
- Rhetorical patterns: how persuasive devices, such as ethos, pathos and logos, as well as fallacies, impact the relationship between the writer, speaker and the reader
- Dramaturgical patterns: how the conventions of drama—the ways in which a play shifts from page to stage—are followed or violated
