Critical Stylistic Analysis of Political Discourse

Critical Stylistic Analysis of Political Discourse

Stylistics is defined as a method of textual interpretation in which primacy of place is given to language’ (Simpson [2004] 2014: 3; original emphasis). There are four constituents of this definition that merit attention. These are language, textual, interpretation, and method. When we use language, we consciously, and unconsciously, make linguistic choices. We select certain words or expressions from a pool of available options, and we favour certain grammatical structures over others in structuring our messages. These lexical selections and grammatical patterns constituting the linguistic form of our texts serve to index the ‘meaning’ as well as the functional significance of the texts. In other words, our linguistic choices act as a point of entry to the interpretation of our texts.