Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics

Mick Short is Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature at Lancaster University, UK. He studied English at the University of Lancaster from 1965, just one year after the university first opened, to 1968. He returned to teach at Lancaster in 1972, retiring in 2012. As an undergraduate he was taught by the early stylistician and poet Anne Cluysenaar, ¹ who was instrumental in setting him on track for an academic career in stylistics. In 1979 he, Katie Wales, Ron Carter and others founded the Poetics and Linguistics Association. Then, in 1992 he became the first editor of Language and Literature. In this interview, he explains how he came to be interested in stylistics, as well as how his academic career began. He discusses what it was like to teach and research stylistics in its early days, the influence of structuralism on stylistics, the beginnings of discourse and pragmatic stylistics and the importance of corpus tools for moving stylistics forwards. He also sets out some concerns about current stylistics and how these concerns might be met in future.

Katie Wales was Professor of English Language at Royal Holloway College, University of London, before moving to the University of Leeds to become Professor of Modern English Language. She later moved to the University of Sheffield and is currently Honorary Professor in the School of English at the University of Nottingham. She is a co-founder of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA) and was instrumental in setting up the journal Language and Literature, serving as its second editor between 1996 and 2004. In this interview she explains how she found out about stylistics as an undergraduate student; how she established an academic career; and how she was able to integrate stylistics into her teaching in the face of resistance from the literary establishment. She discusses her long-standing interest in dialectology and the importance of incorporating a historical perspective into stylistic work. She also discusses the importance of PALA as a support network for stylisticians, particularly in the light of the current assault on the humanities in the UK and elsewhere.

Paul Simpson got his PhD from the University of Ulster in 1984 and took up a post at the University of Nottingham the same year. He has since worked at Queen’s University Belfast and Liverpool University, and is currently at the latter institution. He was editor of Language and Literature from 2004 to 2009 after having been assistant editor. In this interview he recalls the influences that got him into stylistics and how he came to find a place for himself in the field. He explains why the international Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA) is an essential outlet for like-minded individuals who may be in different ‘pockets’ around the world. He talks about his early interest in sociolinguistics and language variation and what fascinates him about language – the things that are usually dismissed by mainstream linguistics as too messy, problematic or slippery. The creativity of language and the pragmatic ways in which ‘language routines’ are subverted are at the heart of what interests him as a stylistician. This brings him to come back to the absurdity of speaking of ‘literary language’ as a separate genre. He comments on his time as editor of Language and Literature, the satisfactions and challenges of the work, the place of the journal in the editorial market and ventures a definition of the broad church of stylistics. Lastly he mentions how stylistics is picking up on new things all the time, going with the tide of new media and approaches, while keeping its momentum at all times and even ‘decolonizing’ itself in the process.

Geoff Hall took degrees separately in English literature and in applied linguistics at the universities of Sussex and Birmingham, respectively. A career in English teaching of all kinds has taken him around the world with posts notably in Singapore, Poland, Spain, UK and China. In every place he always made the effort to learn something of the local languages and literatures which has enriched his life immensely. His most widely cited publication is the book Literature in Language Education (2015a). He was Editor of Language and Literature from 2010-2016. Geoff is currently Visiting Professor of Stylistics, University of Nottingham Ningbo, China, and Professor II, English Language Education, Nord University, Norway. He is trying to retire but remains an incorrigible lifelong learner and travelled widely before Covid 19 hit us all. In this interview, he discusses the importance of pedagogy to the practice of stylistics and explains the important links to be made between pedagogical stylistics and second language acquisition. He argues for a greater level of integration between stylistics and non-linguistically oriented literary studies, aimed at ensuring that stylistic analyses are grounded in an informed appreciation of historical and textual context.