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Towards a Pedagogical Stylistics

Urszula Clark and Sonia Zyngier Language and Literature 2003 12: 339 DOI: 10.1177/09639470030124003 The online version of this article can be found at: http://lal.sagepub.com/content/12/4/339

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A RT I C L E
Towards a pedagogical stylistics
Urszula Clark, University of Wolverhampton, UK Sonia Zyngier, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract
Since the 1950s, pedagogical stylistics has been intrinsically linked with the teaching of written texts (and especially literary texts) to speakers of English as a second language. This is despite the fact that for decades many teachers have also structured their lessons in L1 classrooms to focus upon the linguistic features of literary texts as a means of enhancing their students understanding of literature and language. Recognizing that instructors in both L1 and L2 settings were often employing related pedagogical techniques without realizing that their colleagues in the other context were facing similar challenges, the PEDSIG group of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA) has sought to add a theoretical dimension to research undertaken into practice in the stylistics classroom. Its goals, then, were: to establish a working definition of pedagogical stylistics; to identify the theoretical and pedagogical underpinnings of the discipline shared by L1 and L2 practitioners; to point if possible towards any emerging consensus on good practice. The group determined that the principal aim of stylistics in the classroom is to make students aware of language use within chosen texts, and that what characterizes pedagogical stylistics is classroom activities that are interactive between the text and the (student) reader. Preliminary findings, from a pilot study involving a poem by Langston Hughes, suggest that the process of improving students linguistic sensibilities must include greater emphasis upon the text as action: i.e. upon the mental processing which is such a proactive part of reading and interpretation; and how all of these elements pragmatic and cognitive as well as linguistic function within quite specific social and cultural contexts. Keywords: applied stylistics; Hughes, Langston; L1 and L2 settings; pedagogical stylistics

1 Introduction At the 1997 annual PALA conference held in Nottingham, UK, a special interest group concerned with pedagogical stylistics was convened, called PEDSIG for short. The impetus for this group came from a desire to add a theoretical dimension to research undertaken into practice in the classroom, which is after all one of the loci where reading and interpreting texts take place. This article summarizes the main aspects of PEDSIGs work with a view to stimulating further discussion in what the authors believe to be a neglected area of research.1 Since the late 1950s, thanks largely to work developed under the auspices of the British Council, pedagogical stylistics has been intrinsically linked with the teaching of written texts (and especially literary texts) to speakers of English as a second or foreign language. Supported by the work of Widdowson (1975) and McRae and Boardman (1984) amongst others, stylistic methods especially those
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which concentrate upon the linguistic features of a text have been extensively applied to the teaching of literature to these groups of students.2 There are those who would argue that most L1 stylisticians ignore or are unaware of the problems of teaching English to L2. Support for this view is usually argued along the lines that stylistics in an L2 context has entirely different dimensions and ranges of usefulness when compared with its possible application in language teaching generally. Furthermore, the differences between second and foreign language teaching situations lend further complexities to the issue (see Clark and McRae, 2003). However, alongside approaches focusing upon the application of stylistic methods in an L2 context, publications also began to appear which showed how stylistics methods and approaches could be applied in an L1 context in ways which were very similar to those applied in an L2 context (e.g. Carter and Simpson, 1989; Short, 1989). Since the 1980s, courses in stylistics have become increasingly popular in higher education in the UK, at both undergraduate and graduate levels of study. One of the reasons for this popularity has been the fact that stylistics draws upon linguistic theory to make apparent and explicit the linguistic patterning of texts. These patterns are usually taught to L1 students in an attempt to equip them with the necessary tools that will in turn help them to form their own interpretations, and also serve as a way of substantiating these readings. As part of the dual process, such an analysis also aims to help students discover ambiguities, layers of meaning and any irregular patterning within a text which a different approach might leave undiscovered (often by assuming more knowledge on the students part than they may actually possess). Consequently, the consensus of PEDSIG was that the principal aim in using stylistic methods in a classroom situation of either kind (L1 or L2) was essentially the same: namely a focus on the language of the text and the relationship of that language of the possible meanings and interpretations generated by it, regardless of the specific cultural contexts of the classrooms themselves. This is not to say that those contexts and differences and/or similarities are to be ignored, but merely to recognize that these aspects form a secondary, rather than a primary, consideration. Having made this distinction, however, it is clear from the work of the project described in section 3 of this article that a consideration of the cultural contexts within which interpretation takes place precedes the focus upon language. These ideas are discussed at greater length in sections 2 and 3 below. Section 2 summarizes the first phase of work undertaken by the PEDSIG group between 1997 and 1999; namely, establishing a definition of pedagogical stylistics. Section 3 details the second phase of the work; a small-scale pilot study carried out between 1999 and 2001 investigating aspects of classroom practice.

2 Towards a definition of pedagogical stylistics Defining the wider discipline of stylistics from which pedagogical stylistics is drawn has proven elusive (see Clark and McRae, 2003; Nascione, 1999). In the
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second edition of her seminal text A Dictionary of Stylistics (2001), Wales defines stylistics as a discipline principally concerned with describing the formal features of texts and the functional significance of these features in relation to the interpretation of the text. Wales (2001: 99) emphasizes the keen awareness among stylisticians of the socio-political background which inevitably affects the production and reception of texts, and charts how recent studies have focused increasingly upon those features of language which orientate or anchor our utterances in the context of proximity of space and time, thus demonstrating the multi-dimensional nature of texts and their dependence for meaning upon the situation or context in which they developed. In a similar vein within pedagogical stylistics, Webers The Stylistics Reader (1996) points to a shift which has taken place within stylistics away from the structural, formalist study of texts towards one which views linguistic acts as not only action (pragmatic) but also involving mental processes (cognition). Both dimensions operate within social and cultural contexts which can be analyzed from various perspectives: e.g. feminist or critical. Pedagogical stylistics, according to Weber, is distinct from such activity, since it is characterized instead by activities that are interactive between the text and the (student) reader, with specific texts, classroom activities and interpretation usually mediated by the teacher (see also Haynes, 1989). The aim of such activity is to improve students awareness of language use (see Short, 1989). However, a further aim has also been claimed for such teaching: in addition to sensitizing students in their language use through participation in stylistic activities, students own skills in reading and writing are improved. More particularly, this second aim is often referred to as justification for the inclusion of teaching literature within a language classroom, particularly in L2 contexts. After much discussion, the group determined that pedagogical stylistics cannot lay claim to the proposition that teaching activities centred on or associated with stylistics can of themselves improve students own abilities in reading and writing, or in linguistic competence in general. The principal aim of stylistics in the classroom is to sensitize students to language use within the texts chosen for study. It is often assumed that the skills involved in the analysis of texts are (as a by-product) transferable to the ways in which students use language themselves, particularly in terms of their own writing. Such a by-product ought not to be minimized or ignored. Nevertheless, it does not provide the main aim or reason for teaching stylistics. Consequently, the principles and practices associated with pedagogical stylistics draw upon theoretical frameworks at work within stylistics generally rather than any other discipline. It is thus as much a branch of applied stylistics as any other kind, and so not distinct from such activities, but part of them. The difference is in the purpose and function of such activity, and although the overall aim of pedagogical stylistics is raising students awareness of language use rather than formulating new theories or testing established theories by application, its practices draw upon stylistic theory and method in much the same way as any other stylistic activity.

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In order to illustrate this point further, Bex (1999) offers a distinction originally made by Widdowson (1984) between applied linguistics and linguistics applied. Applied linguistics identifies particular problems and draws upon linguistic theories as a means of solving them. Linguistics applied draws upon linguistic theories as a means of explicating text in general, where text is taken to mean any stretch of language whether spoken or written, and can be regarded as the empirical test of such theories. A similar dichotomy is also at work within stylistics. On the one hand, there are those who develop theories of how text is processed and then test these theories against actual reader behaviour (stylistics applied). A current example of such practice is the work developed in the field of cognitive stylistics. On the other hand, there are those (such as Carter and Simpson, 1989; Short, 1996a) who identify problems within a text and reach for the theory that is most likely to produce a solution (applied stylistics). Stylistics is primarily driven by theoretical concerns which centre on how texts are constructed and construed. Typically, such texts have been drawn from that body of work which is called literature. However, some stylisticians, recognizing that literature is notoriously difficult to define, concern themselves with any kind of text: usually written forms, but which can also extend to spoken language. This may be because they feel that the study of non-literary texts can illumine the boundaries of literary texts, or because they believe that there is a cline between literary and non-literary texts, and that the same theoretical concerns can be applied to both. Applied stylistics can serve whatever purpose its practitioners wish. However, as a sub-discipline within applied stylistics, pedagogical stylistics is clearly aimed at the use of stylistics within the classroom and enhancing an understanding of how it works. As such, it draws on research carried out by stylisticians, converts it into teaching materials, and then observes how students react. If applied stylistics typically identifies problems with particular texts and suggests solutions, then the branch that is pedagogical stylistics will be concerned first and foremost with sensitizing learners to linguistic and poetic problems specific to a text (very often literary, though nonliterary texts can be applicable), then encouraging them to suggest solutions in the most appropriate way, and investigating how the interaction between students, teachers and texts occurs. The purpose of this pedagogy is not so much to produce the next generation of stylisticians (although this may occur), or create even more accurate users of a language (although again this may occur), but to promote linguistically aware readers who can perceive the qualities of language which are manipulated for particular effects (including the aesthetic). One of the main benefits of a stylistic approach is that it enables students to be more explicit about the subtleties of language usage. It is true that the level of the average language learners or users knowledge of the English language may not be sufficiently developed to allow an intuitive sense of language use. Conversely, it could be said that some students may possess an intuitive sense, but lack the appropriate vocabulary with which to express it. Short (1996b) argues that linguistic features identified in a text do not of themselves constitute its meanings.

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Rather, they constrain readers from inferring unreasonable meanings and prompt them towards more reasonable ones. Thus pedagogical stylistics is not bound solely by the teaching of linguistic patterning or identification of problems, but functions as a necessary step towards considering the text as an act of communication, and thus a constituent part of discourse (see McCarthy and Carter, 1994). 2.1 Identifying the types of pedagogical activities In order to explicate the kinds of activities with which pedagogical stylistics is generally associated, it is necessary first of all to elucidate the main concerns of stylistics generally. Bex (1999: 3) suggests that the stylistics enterprise is crucially focused upon how: writers (or speakers) make selections from the linguistic potentials of a given language so as to create an artefact manifesting certain formal properties (e.g. foregrounding); writers construct cohesion and coherence within a text so as to give it a dynamic of its own (e.g. narrative structure); writers position themselves (and their characters) vis--vis their potential readers (e.g. modality, transitivity, point of view); writers draw attention to previous texts (intertexuality); readers track texts during the act of processing (e.g. anaphoric devices); readers draw upon their cognitive environment in the interpretation of texts either individually (e.g. relevance) or universally (e.g. cognitive metaphors); readers place texts within a social context (e.g. genre studies); texts mediate authority, power and control (e.g. critical discourse analysis, feminist approaches see Mills, 1995). This list can be subdivided into three different kinds of activity: (a) those related to the recognizably formal and linguistic properties of a text, which itself exists as an isolated item in the world; (b) those which refer to the points of contact between a text, other texts and their readers; and (c) those which position the text and consideration of its formal and psychological elements within a socio-cultural context. The first kind of activity (focus on formal and linguistic properties) includes the first three points listed above, i.e. the ways in which writers (or speakers): make selections from the linguistic potentials of a given language so as to create an artefact manifesting certain formal properties (e.g. foregrounding); construct cohesion and coherence within a text so as to give it a dynamic of its own (e.g. narrative structure see Simpson, 1992, 1997); position themselves (and their characters) vis--vis their potential readers or listeners (e.g. modality, transitivity, point of view). Of all the areas associated with stylistics, this first one has the most developed

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conceptual vocabulary and frames of reference. In the stylistics classroom, a common metalanguage exists for such activities centred on the metaphorical concept of the stylisticians toolbox. This also includes the use of checklists of the kind offered by Short (1996b) and McRae (1998). As Short (1996a) points out, the techniques often associated with teaching English language to non-native students of English offer a common ground shared by both L1 and L2 students, and, because this is the area that is the most developed within stylistics, it is usually the one drawn upon when it comes to pedagogic practice. The second kind of activity considers the point of contact between the text and the reader and includes the next two items listed above: i.e. the ways in which writers draw attention to previous texts (intertexuality); readers track texts during the act of processing (e.g. anaphoric devices). Here, as research into this area becomes more developed, a common metalanguage is beginning to emerge, which makes transition to a pedagogic context possible. Finally, the third kind of activity considers the text within its socio-cultural context i.e. the ways in which: readers draw upon their cognitive environment in the interpretation of texts either individually or universally; readers place texts within a social context (e.g. genre studies); texts mediate authority, power and control (e.g. critical discourse analysis, feminist stylistics). The third category moves or shifts the point of focus away from a static and monologic view of the text which exists in its own world as a self-sufficient entity toward one which is much more dynamic, cognitive, intertextual and interpersonal. Precisely how it fits in with or relates to the other two is an area yet to be fully explored, as Toolan (1998) points out, and this is sometimes used as an excuse for not engaging with it in a pedagogic context. Nevertheless, as discussion in section 3 later makes clearer, this does not preclude consideration of such issues in such a context (see Clark, 1999; Ellsworth, 1989; Freire, 1970; Giroux, 1999; Zyngier, 1994, 1999a, 1999b). The list given above and its categorization are not intended to be exhaustive, and, quite clearly, within these various investigations stylisticians will concern themselves to a greater or lesser extent with detailed studies of particular texts, working within the frame of references provided by some (but not all) of them. Nevertheless, it suggests the range of activity from which a teacher using stylistic methods can select in the course of explicating particular texts.

2.2 Principles of selection In his analysis of specific pedagogic practice in the classroom, Bex (1999: 2) suggests that engagement in stylistic activity in a classroom context requires three

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distinct but interrelated choices on the part of the teacher in terms of text, method and application. Each is based upon a different but interrelated principle of selection: (a) The choice of text. The principle of selection at work is usually either (i) selection of a text or group of texts to illustrate a particular stylistic point, or (ii) selection of a text and subsequent identification of a range of stylistic issues within it and indication of possible solutions. (b) Selection of the most appropriate linguistic, literary or theoretical approach or model, and associated practices from the stylisticians toolbox, to illustrate a specific stylistic point in the case of (a)(i) above, or in order to bring about a solution to a particular textual problem or general principle, as in the case of (a)(ii). (c) Applying the selection of approaches/methods outlined in (b) above to the chosen text(s) in the ongoing dynamic of the classroom/seminar/workshop. As regards (a), the choice of text is usually defined by the context of the course or module within which it is being studied. Selecting the appropriate approach from the stylisticians toolbox ([b] above) when studying a text is probably nonproblematic, in that most teachers would have an extensive knowledge of such tools, aided as they are by the aforementioned proliferation of textbooks. Applying the selection of stylistic tools to the chosen text(s) within the classroom/seminar/workshop is thus probably the most difficult to investigate, and became the area upon which the work of PEDSIG concentrated. Toward this end, a pilot empirical study was begun in 1999; it is detailed in the next section.

3 Pilot study: stylistics and the classroom Members of PEDSIG were invited to take part in a small-scale study planned by the groups coordinators. The members were asked to complete a questionnaire designed by Tony Bex, and to supplement this with a taped or video-recorded record of a teaching session which featured the use of a specific text in this case the poem I, too, sing America by Langston Hughes (1925: 54). In this way, the potential for incompatibility of results through the variable of text selection was removed, allowing for an analysis of aspects (b) and (c) above (method and application) to be undertaken. The following section summarizes the results of this study.

3.1 Questionnaires In all, seven questionnaires were completed by group members in five different countries from around the world. The combined teaching experience of the respondents was 123 years, with all participants having experience of teaching at undergraduate (and most at postgraduate) level. All the respondents said that they

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consciously used stylistics in aspects of their teaching, either as part of a course designated stylistics or within others where it was not. All said that the main purpose of such teaching was in the detailed examination of literary passages as a way of keying students into the language of texts. Teaching English language through literature was also a common feature of these responses. All participants said that they distinguished between stylistic approaches and other pedagogic methods in their teaching, although how this distinction was made was not specified. It was clear from the responses that taking a stylistic approach to textual analysis was something which cut across the teaching experiences of all the respondents, regardless of whether or not the activity was specifically undertaken as part of a class in stylistics. More than one respondent said that they made use of stylistic principles even where classroom activities were not directly related to this subject. Answers to the questionnaires, then, demonstrated the ways in which stylistics permeated respondents teaching practices whenever discussion of texts and their interpretation featured as part of the curriculum. It was also clear that a stylistic approach to textual analysis lends itself, if a teacher so wishes, to forming part of a range of pedagogic practices associated with textual interpretation, and thus does not lay any claims to being the right or only way to engage in such practice. The cognitive processes involved in reading a text, be it at the beginning level of decoding print or at the advanced levels of interpretation, remain a fascinating individual psychological and cultural process, with no one tried and tested method which works for all. Consequently, just as an experienced teacher of reading will use many practices at his or her disposal in the hope that one or a combination of them will unlock the magic of reading, so an experienced teacher of interpretation also draws upon a range of practices, of which those associated with stylistics might be one, as a way of illuminating the complexities of meaning embedded within texts, particularly literary ones. This is not to say that courses or modules devoted to stylistics are not valuable, but that stylistics, for all its merits, cannot lay claim to being the only (or even the best) pedagogic practice which illuminates meaning for students, nor would its practitioners ever wish to make such a claim. Rather, its strengths lie in the systematic consideration of the ways in which layers of language, the stuff of which texts are made, are organized, merge and coalesce into a texture of various layers of meaning. As Short (1996b: 15) points out, the strength of such an approach is that stylistics limits the range of possible interpretations and thus prompts students to make choices informed by linguistic patterning, rather than relying upon intuition and/or any other literary or critical appreciation techniques.

3.2 Recordings In the interest of reliability and to supplement the questionnaires, those who answered questionnaires were invited to record teaching sessions in which they had had an opportunity to use the poem I, too, sing America by Langston Hughes. Two audiotapes and one videotape of actual lessons were returned.

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Common to all three recordings was a reliance upon the type of activities described in the first set outlined in 2 earlier: that is, the attention paid to the formal structures of language and the part played by language in structuring the experience presented in the text under study. More interestingly, however, these tapes showed the ways in which the more formal aspects of linguistic patterning were linked to the manner in which the students as readers drew upon their cognitive environment in their interpretation of a text. The recordings dramatized how students as readers placed the text in a social context and, particularly with regard to this poem, how the text mediates authority, power and control. Consequently, a common factor in all three recordings is the evidence of the shift in stylistics identified by Weber (1996) which is as true of pedagogical stylistics as anywhere else in the field: i.e. a movement away from the structural, formalist study of texts towards one which views linguistic acts as action (pragmatic), focusing upon mental processes (cognition), and operating within social and cultural contexts which can be analysed from various perspectives. This is not to say that the structural, formalist study of a text did not occur in the recordings made, since it did. The difference was that this kind of study then led on to viewing linguistic acts as actions which involved mental processes. Clearly, such a small-scale study cannot claim that such a shift permeates all classroom practice undertaken in the name of stylistics. For that to happen, a much larger study would need to be undertaken. Nevertheless, in the absence of such empirical study to date, the one described here may serve as the basis for a strong hypothesis. In order to further illustrate this point, an example can be taken from the submitted video recording which featured a re-writing exercise, a pedagogic practice generally used in the literary/stylistic classroom. In this particular case the exercise was developed by Sonia Zyngier for her undergraduate course Literary Awareness, in which she works with EFL students between the ages of 19 and 21 prior to their studies in English literature, but drawing on the prior experiences all of them have had in studying Brazilian and Portuguese literature both in secondary schools and at the University of Rio de Janeiro (Zyngier, 2000). The exercise asks the students to focus upon the powerful poem by Hughes referred to above, which speaks directly of the difficulties of making a minority voice heard in a modern state, as the following lines illustrate: I am the darker brother. ...................................... They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, An eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, Ill eat at the table When company comes. I, too, sing America (1925: 54), ll. 210

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Students were asked to discuss a list of questions compiled by the teacher, half of which were aimed at eliciting a close analysis of the language of the poem tenses, use of time, agency, referents, conjunctions, etc. The other half related to the events and feelings related in the poem, finishing with a consideration of the poems context, including the time in which it was written. The teacher, in summing up the session, commented that: students reached the end of the discussion by providing five possible contexts: One group thought the poem was about North and South Americans divided by economic and political stages . . . Another group considered the black and white ever discussed theme, in which black people are said to be inferior to white people . . . Finally, others mentioned the contrast between rich/poor, employer/employee and Americans/immigrants . . . This activity helped students talk about the many interpretations a poem can have and enabled them to develop their power of argumentation by using examples from the text that conformed to their opinion . . . The different possible interpretations centre around one theme, that of prejudice: in the words of one student: . . . my group found that we had a kind of debate in the class as each group had a different interpretation. It was very interesting because, even though the interpretations were different, all the groups found that the poem was about prejudice . . .. (Zyngier, 2000: 5) Following the discussion, students discussed topics which might lend themselves to being written in a similar style and highlighting similar tensions in historical/ cultural contexts. Having then written these poems of their own, students were asked to reflect upon this process. Typically, the main function of such an exercise is for students to experience the subtleties of language use evident in a text under discussion for themselves by attempting to write either a text in a similar style, as was the case in this lesson, or to re-write it in a different one: a poem as prose, or a narrative from a different characters perspective, for example. By engaging in such an activity, students intuitive knowledge of linguistic structures associated with writing is brought to the surface or, conversely, explicitly taught structures may become absorbed into a more intuitive layer of consciousness. One student wrote the following poem and accompanying commentary during such a lesson (Zyngier, 2000: 6-7): Revenge! Yesterday I was a student Sitting behind the class I thought that I couldnt Do the exercises best Tomorrow I will be a teacher Standing in front of a class My students will think they cant reach The same things that I have passed.

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First of all, I have used the contrast between past and future disposed in two different stanzas. The first stanza was written in the past tense and the second in the future. My intention was to show all my feelings as a student now, and then I thought about how teachers work, what they do and I could only see all the time that it looks like a revenge. So, I thought that it sounded not only a good and funny idea, but also a perfect title for my poem I wanted to show my own feelings, as I am studying to be a teacher, someone who deals with these two sides: students minds and a teachers thoughts. I have noticed that it is easier to show feelings without hurting other peoples ideas through the alteration of time. Nevertheless, the primary function of such an exercise is still that of making students aware of the complexity of language and its capacity for referentiality (see McRae, 1998). The by-product of such an activity may well be an improvement in the students own linguistic competence in a specific context but, as with pedagogical stylistics generally, and as argued in section 1 earlier, this is not its primary or overarching purpose, nor can the undertaking of such an activity guarantee transference of linguistic skill from one pedagogic context to another. The primary focus is on creativity and the multiplicity of meanings produced through patterns of language, rather than the patterns of language themselves, or any consequent accuracy on the part of students in their reproduction. Instead, learning, understanding, and making more explicit patterns of language are all primary and necessary steps towards developing a stylistic interpretation of a text, and part of the process of textual interpretation rather than an end in itself. Furthermore, the act of interpretation and the context within which it occurs are themselves located in a network of other contexts social, cultural, economic, and political which all play a part, regardless of whether they remain implicit or are made explicit. It is these contexts that are brought into play when a poem such as I, too, sing America is studied in a classroom, and account for the different nuances of discussion and interpretation made by students in the three recorded settings of Brazil, Latvia and England.

4 Conclusion The work of the PEDSIG project to date firmly supports the notion that the principal aim of stylistics in the classroom is to make students aware of language use in the texts chosen for study. What characterizes pedagogical stylistics are classroom activities that are interactive between the text and the (student) reader, with both texts and activities usually chosen by the teacher (see Clark, 1996, 1999; Wright and Hope, 1996). This also involves a foregrounding of the consciousness that interpretation is mediated by the teacher, with the intention of improving students awareness of language use. The principle of selection at work in choosing the text and the activities associated with it is constrained by a number

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of variables, such as: course syllabus, availability of teaching materials, students abilities and interests, the teachers own preferences, etc. (see Widdowson, 1975; also Haynes, 1995; Toolan, 1997). Thus, preliminary findings from PEDSIG suggest that part of this self-same process of improving students linguistic sensibilities has to include placing greater emphasis upon the text as action: the mental processing which is such a proactive part of reading and interpretation, and how all of these elements pragmatic and cognitive as well as linguistic function within quite specific social and cultural contexts. The work of the PEDSIG project as described in this article has come to an end, but there is clearly room for further study.

Notes
1 Particular thanks are due to Tony Bex (UK), Roger Sell (Finland) and Peter Verdonk (The Netherlands) for the part they played in the design of the empirical part of the project; and to Anita Nascione (Latvia) and Tony Bex for their contributions to the efforts to define pedagogical stylistics. Special thanks are offered to those who completed questionnaires and/or recorded their classes: Willie Van Peer (Germany); Anita Nascione; Michael Burke (The Netherlands); Alicina de Souza (Madeira); Dominique Costa (Madeira). Finally, sincere thanks are extended to all of the delegates of the PALA conference held between 1997 and 2000 who took part in the workshops and/or contributed to the project (a group approximately 50 strong). For the remainder of this article, the term L1 denotes speakers of English as a first language and L2 speakers of English as a second or foreign language.

References
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Addresses
Urszula Clark, School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences, University of Wolverhampton, Stafford Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1SB, UK. [email: U.Clark@wlv.ac.uk] Sonia Zyngier, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. [email: sozyngier@hotmail.com]

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