The uses of literature: towards a bidirectional stylistics

Abstract

In this article, I demonstrate how an examination of the pragmatics of the pseudo-cleft in the fiction of Flannery O'Connor can do more than simply illustrate the precise manner in which she employs and patterns a given linguistic structure. Such an examination can also provide persuasive evidence of the overall value of literary language for the study of linguistics. That is to say, a careful, complete analysis of the pragmatics of the pseudo-cleft in O'Connor's fiction not only shows how linguistics can be used to enrich our understanding of literature, but, more importantly, how literature can be used to enrich our understanding of linguistics. More specifically, though previous linguistic definitions of the pseudo-cleft differ in a variety of ways, to my knowledge none of those definitions have ever discussed the pseudo-cleft as a given + given (presupposition only) information packaging structure. Since 18 of the 79 pseudo-clefts in O'Connor's canon do, in fact, pattern as given + given structures, I will argue that, at the very least, O'Connor's use of the pseudo-cleft challenges existing linguistic accounts of the structure. Based on the results of my analysis, I therefore argue for what I call a `bidirectional stylistics' — a broader approach to stylistics that emphasizes its ability as a discipline to expand and complete existing linguistic explanations that are based only on non-literary data.