Dyskurs i stylistyka

The aim of the work is to capture and interpret the changes of cognitive horizons, assumptions, attitudes and methods of an academic examination which took place in the contemporary stylistics under the influence of expansively developing studies on discourse. The category of discourse, as a point of reference, is considered here both as a theoretical notion and a defined method of text interpretation. Outlining first the fields of interests of the contemporary stylistics, and characterizing its open paradigm and dialogue which the stylistics conducts with other research trends on text and social communication, the author is in favour of a wide understanding of the style as an extratextual (reaching the sphere of human behaviour) and polymorphic category, forming at the meeting of a cultural, pragmatic-semantic and linguistic system. The style is a component of each performance/ text. In the introductory part, the category of discourse and its relation to the text underwent a theoretical reflection, as well as the change of perspective the discourse stylistics brings confronted with the assumptions of the text stylistics was presented. The author is in favour of the understanding of the text as an abstract category, modeling a given text, assuming that discourse is a type of a culturally-determined and institutionalized social practice. In the second chapter, on the basis of given examples, the author considers and analyses the issue of the relationship of a style with selected discourses of the contemporary culture (experiences of everyday life, iconness, cultural gender and feminist criticism) as well as the categories of the subject (aspects of utterance subjectivization) and the receiver. The receiver is treated here as the co-creator of the text, (both in the case of direct and indirect communication) that is why much onus falls on the analysis of its presence in the text. The analyses in question expose an interactive dimension of each text and exposed in a varying degree. The interpretation concentrates on the discussion of the receiver engagement technigues, an emphasis being put on the strategies currently present in the contemporary culture. Pragmatic-cultural style entanglements close the considerations on the category of space and time examined from the perspective of discoursively-oriented stylistics. The third chapter discusses typical styles, both communicative/functional ones and text genre styles. The author ponders over the consequences of introducing the category of discourse in places already reserved for the category of a communicative/functional style, illustrating the theoretical remarks on the interpretation of stylistic aspects of a feminist discourse. Considering the issue of the genre style, on the other hand, she exposes its external relations with the style/discourse styles constituting the frames of a given genre) and internal relations with the remaining genre components. The exemplifying material, undergoing a detailed and multi-aspectual observations, covered the descriptions (ecphrases) of a given piece of art, included in various genres (poetry, prose, bedecker, dissertation and essay), on which the stylistics of institutional discourses, i.e. a discourse on art, a tourist, artistic and promotional discourse, etc. The last chapter is devoted to the issue of an individual style in the perspective of studies on discourse. The very work presents the stylistics as a living field, immersed in the context of culture and constantly changing with it. At the same time, the discourse perspective highlighted its transdisciplined nature — connections to other spheres of cultural experiences with the sphere of practice (human actions), everyday life, norms and social values, institutional conditions, etc. The method of examining the linguistic reality the discourse perspective introduces is close to the stylistics mainly because the subject as a participant of a social game comes to the fore. The importance of a subjective element is visible in almost each relation the discourse forms: between the language and social and cultural reality created by it, between our thinking (knowledge, ideology, imagination and values) and social processes, between the discourse and non-discourse elements, etc. This shift of a contemporary stylistics from a specialized discipline into a more general direction is perceived by the author of the work as a chance of its further development.