This document provides an overview of cognitive, affective, and expressive stylistics as well as their relationships to critical discourse analysis. Cognitive stylistics analyzes the mental processes of readers when engaging with texts. Affective stylistics focuses on how texts aim to encourage or influence readers' emotions and beliefs. Expressive stylistics examines how an author's personality and inner self are revealed through their linguistic style. Critical discourse analysis aims to uncover the ideologies embedded in texts and how power relations are encoded through language. Critical stylistics combines tools from stylistics and critical linguistics to systematically analyze how the linguistic features of a text convey its underlying ideology.

1. UNIVERSITY OF KERBALA
COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
Cognitive, Affective and Expressive Stylistics
CDA and Stylistics
By: Diyaa Salim Rheem (dheyaa.s@s.uokerbala.edu.iq).
Supervised by
Asst. Prof. Dr. Nidaa Hussain Fahmi Al Khazraji

2. Cognitive Stylistics
• It is a part of the natural development of modern stylistics regularly to enrich
and update its methods of analysis. (Simpson, 2004: 38).
• Cognitive stylistics is mostly concerned with the cognitive processes – mental
simulations experienced by readers. Most cognitive stylisticians agree that
experiences of reading texts are dynamic and flexible.
• Cognitive stylistics provides a new way of thinking about literature involving
the application of cognitive linguistics and psychology to the literary texts . It is
more concerned with presenting a descriptive and detailed account of linguistic
features of a text in a systematic and non-evaluative way. (Stockwell, 2002:4).

3. • What makes cognitive stylistics somewhat different is its relationship to
cognitive science. It means that cognitive theory of linguistic and the
cognitive psychology of reading are two fields that relate directly to
cognitive stylistics.
• Developments in Cognitive Stylistics.
Some of the essential keys and devices are used to transfer, modify and
blend mental concepts are schema theory, text world theory, conceptual metaphor theory and
mental space theory .
• Schema theory
Schema theory is a key idea within cognitive stylistics which derives mainly from psychology and
artificial intelligence. A schema is a cognitive structure which provides information about our
understanding of universal entities, events and situations, and in so doing helps to scaffold our
mental understanding of the world. (Emmott, 2017: 268).
It, also, means that all experiences are stored in the memory and the human mind activates in the
process of understanding or dealing with new experiences or data for the purposes of interpretation .

4. • Text world theory
• Text World Theory is a cognitive-linguistic model of human discourse processing. The basic
principle of Text World Theory is that human beings process and understand all discourse by
constructing mental representations of it in their minds. It means, when people engage in
discourse, they together build up a world in which its intentions are coherent and make sense.
(Werth 1999: 20,).
• Conceptual metaphor theory.
• It refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual field, in terms of another. The
standard definition of conceptual metaphors “is understanding one domain of experience (that
is typically abstract) in terms of another (that is typically concrete)”.
• Mental space theory
• It focuses on people’s psychological operation in meaning construction. According to the
theory, meaning construction refers to “the high-level, complex mental operations that apply
within and across domains when we think, act, or communicate” (Fauconnier 1997:1).

5. Affective stylistics
• Affective stylistics" is a term used by Stanley Fish to describe the process through
which the reading of a text contributes to its meaning and does not merely extract it.
• Affective Stylistics: It is suitable for studying texts in which signal is dominant as
in public speeches, sermons, advertisements. In such texts the hearer or speaker tries
to encourage, affect, appeal to, or push the reader or hearer into believing in a
certain things or taking some kind of action. One language function or more may be
central in the same text.
• It is a manner in which we deal with things emotionally, such as feelings,
appreciation, motivations, and attitudes.

6. Expressive Stylistics
• It investigates texts in which indication is dominant like lyric poetry, personal
letters and biographies. In such texts the focus is on the author or speaker's
personality.
• This is approach is often considered “old-fashioned. This approach emphasizes an
identification of how the style, the linguistic elements, reveal the personality or
“Soul” of the author. It follows the belief that the artists employ language to
express their inner selves.
• Therefore, There is the concept of style as idiolect, that each language user has
some linguistic factors that not only mark him/her out but also expresses his/her
personality.
• The obvious weakness of this approach is the chance that writers
change their personality and language over time and text and that a variation in
one does not necessarily convoy a change in the other.

7. Critical Discourse Analysis and Stylistics
• Critical discourse analysis (CDA) attempts to reveal the ways social structures and
processes are encoded in the discourse practices. By raising the public awareness of
the encoded ideologies which spread the strategies of influence, manipulation,
encouragement working by those in power, these practices can not only be revealed,
but also changed.
• To Halliday, CDA is the way in which that public discourse not only reflects patterns
of social organization, but also helps construct, re-inforce and reproduce them.
• Ideology: is a set of beliefs or attitudes shared by members of a particular social
group. It is necessary for a critical discourse analysis to be aware that most discourse
used by members of a group tends to be ideologically based. Often those beliefs and
attitudes are unconsciously held by individuals.
• CDA aims at uncovering the embedded ideology through the relations between
textual analysis and socio-context. Critical stylistics also aims at revealing the
embedded ideologies through linguistic choices.

8. • Critical stylistics, according to Jeffries (2010), examines texts in terms of
textual conceptual meaning to uncover the ideological aspects of a text.
• It aims to analyze both literary and nonliterary texts to reveal how texts show
the truth to the reader or the hearer. Jeffries has identified some faults in
adopting the CDA approach for analysis.
• Therefore, she has tried to set a comprehensive method by constructing a
systematic model of analysis that combines tools from stylistics as well as
critical linguistics. Jeffries attempts to display the linguistic features of the text
to show the workings that show the ideology of a text (Jeffries, 2010:14).

9. • References:
• Jacoby, Mario (1971). The Muse as a Symbol of Literary Creativity. In Joseph P.
Strelka (ed.), Anagogic Qualities of Literature (pp. 36–50). University Park and
London: Pennsylvania State University Press.
• Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: A resource book for students, Psychology Press.
• Stockwell, P. (2002). Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. Routlege: London.
• Emmott, C., et al. (2017). Schema theory in stylistics. The Routledge handbook of
stylistics, Routledge: 286-301.
• Werth, P. (1999) Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse,
Harlow: Longman.
• Fauconnier, G. (1997). Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
• Fish SE (1970). "Literature in the reader: Affective Stylistics". New Literary
History. John Hopkins University Press, 2(1): 123-162.
• Jeffries, L. (2010). Critical Stylistics: The Power of English. London: Palgrave
Macmillan.