The year’s work in stylistics 2003

The field of stylistics continues to charm with its eclectic variety of wild flowers - or frustrate by its lack of co-ordination & clear boundaries, depending on your mood or perspective. On the other hand, cognitivists influenced by more empirical paradigms from psychology are prompting us all to more disciplined methodological principles as they progress & build on each other's work. This review accordingly follows five headings of Narrative & Discourse; Metaphor & Proverb; Poetry, Play & Translation; Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA); & Variation, to delineate more sociolinguistically oriented & inspired work on variety in use. We conclude with some larger reflections on questions of style & where future research may need to expand its horizons. At the same time it is fully acknowledged that these headings & boundaries are imprecise, overlap & cannot neatly contain all the variety found even in the one year of flourishing publication of 2003. We return to this point also in our conclusion. 127 References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2004.]