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Language in Place
Stylistic perspectives on landscape, place and environment
Editors
The contributions in this collection offer a wide range of stylistic perspectives on landscape, place and environment, by focusing on a variety of text-types ranging from poetry, the Bible, fictional and non-fictional prose, to newspaper articles, condo names, online texts and exhibitions. Employing both established and cutting-edge methodologies from, among others, corpus linguistics, metaphor studies, Text World Theory and ecostylistics, the eleven chapters in the volume provide an overview of how landscape, place and environment are encoded and can be investigated in literary and non-literary discourse. The studies collected here stand as evidence of the possibility of, and the need for, a “stylistics of landscape”, which emphasises how represented spaces are made manifest linguistically; a “stylistics of place”, which focuses on the discursive and affective qualities of those represented spaces; and a “stylistics of environment”, which reiterates the urgency for environmentally-responsible humanities, able to support a change in the anthropocentric narrative which poses humans as the most important variable in the human-animal and human-environment relationships.
[Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 37] 2021. vii, 258 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 24 March 2021
Published online on 24 March 2021
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements | pp. vii–viii
- Chapter 1. IntroductionDaniela Francesca Virdis, Elisabetta Zurru and Ernestine Lahey | pp. 1–16
- Chapter 2. Thematic adverbial adjuncts of place and direction and their relationship to conceptual metaphor in A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire LadAndrew Goatly | pp. 17–44
- Chapter 3. Death by nature in two poems by Alden NowlanErnestine Lahey | pp. 45–64
- Chapter 4. Liminal islands: A cognitive stylistic analysis of “Beyond the Pale” and “Rathlin” by Derek MahonNigel McLoughlin | pp. 65–84
- Chapter 5. Urban metaphors: Conceptual and literary depictions of cities in the BibleKarolien Vermeulen | pp. 85–104
- Chapter 6. The Arabic of Dune : Language and landscapeKarin Christina Ryding | pp. 105–124
- Chapter 7. (Re)mapping “authentic” London: Iain Sinclair’s London Overground (2015) and the semiotic landscape of London’s East EndJennifer Smith | pp. 125–146
- Chapter 8. “Boston Strong”: Place-making practices and enregisterment in the Boston Marathon discourse 2013/2014Kristin Berberich | pp. 147–166
- Chapter 9. Naming as styling: Inauthenticity in building names in SingaporePeter K. W. Tan | pp. 167–188
- Chapter 10. “She enjoys being stroked”, “They are affectionate, lively and interactive boys”: An ecostylistic scrutiny of animal agency and alternative discourse in Battersea Dogs & Cats Home websiteDaniela Francesca Virdis | pp. 189–208
- Chapter 11. “Your planet needs you”: An ecostylistic analysis of an ecology-oriented interactive exhibitionElisabetta Zurru | pp. 209–228
- Chapter 12. London past and present: The Museum of London’s multi-faceted presentation of the cityLinda Pillière | pp. 229–252
- Name index | pp. 253–254
- Subject index | pp. 255–258
“[...] this book is a joy to read, with its many interesting case studies on place, landscape and environment. The approach the case studies have in common, an ecostylistic analysis, gives a valuable contribution to sociolinguistics. The theoretical concepts, data and sources used in most of the cases studies are perhaps non-typical (or less central, at least) to sociolinguistics, such as literary
criticism, conceptual metaphors, poetry and poetics, text world theory, reader-response, but exactly that makes this volume worthwhile.”
criticism, conceptual metaphors, poetry and poetics, text world theory, reader-response, but exactly that makes this volume worthwhile.”
Jos Swanenberg, in Sociolinguistic Studies Volume 15.2-4 2021
“The volume as a whole certainly raises interesting questions about the linguistic work that goes into describing places, whether in literary texts, commercial presentations, media framings, political discourses, or common conversations.”
Mary Shapiro, Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, on Linguist List 33.1387 (18 April 2022).
“Perhaps the most compelling feature of the book is the deep ecological consciousness and sensitivity of many of the writers, whose work confirms the possibilities for ecostylistics beyond this text.”
Anne Furlong, University of Prince Edward Island, in Journal of Literary Semantics 2022; 51(2): 163–168
“Each of the eleven chapters of the book has its highlight or focus and altogether contribute to the success of the book both as “stylistics of place” — which foregrounds the affective and associative qualities of those represented spaces — and as “stylistics of environment” which reminds the reader of the urgent need for ecological balance.”
Ying Fang, Yangzhou University, in Language & Ecology 2023
“Each chapter is well worth reading, even if it is only for the theories and methods used. These, it seems, have considerable potential for future scholarship, especially by ecocritics who are interested in interdisciplinary collaborations with researchers in fields that work empirically or those who seek to move beyond the linguistic representations covered here to also consider, for example, visual data (film, photography, and so on). Language in Place provides several excellent roadmaps for this kind of work and for future explorations of landscapes, places, and the environment.”
Micha Gerrit Philipp Edlich, Leuphana University, in Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 14, No. 2 (2023).
Cited by (10)
Cited by ten other publications
Zhang, Ruijie
Ursini, Francesco-Alessio & Giuseppe Samo
Alarcón-Hermosilla, Salvador
Giovanelli, Marcello
Price, Hazel
Virdis, Daniela Francesca
Virdis, Daniela Francesca
Virdis, Daniela Francesca
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 february 2026. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.