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In:Practising Stylistics: Essays in Honour of Paul Simpson
Edited by Clara Neary, Simon Statham and Peter Stockwell
[Linguistic Approaches to Literature 45] 2026
► pp. 112–120

Chapter 9: Vignette
Suspension in pedagogical stylistics

 | Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
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Abstract
This chapter, by Sonia Zyngier, explores how the experiential stylistic pattern of suspension may affect the reading experience. Taking its cue from Simpson’s (2025) observation that different levels of language cannot be considered in isolation from each other, and developing its description in the discursive focalising categories of ‘arrest’ and ‘extension’ proposed by Sinclair (2016), forms of suspension are explored in passages from Woolf, Lawrence, Shakespeare, and Dickens. Finally, there is a consideration of how the feeling of suspension might be explored in a classroom setting. This last concern has been critical in the development of the field: new students often flounder when faced with unfamiliar literary texts, and stylistics can offer them a practical lifeline. Zyngier has had a long interest in the pedagogical and practical applications of stylistics from Zyngier (1994) to Zyngier and Watson (2022), and demonstrates here the power of stylistics for established academic and new student literary scholars alike.
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