ABSTRACT
In stylistics, linguistic concepts and methodologies are employed to examine how meaning is created through language in literature and other types of text. Multimodal Stylistics of the Novel: More Than Words extends this practice of anchoring analysis solidly in the lexis and grammar of the text to other semiotic modes and their interaction. The book proposes a framework for stylistic analysis of multimodal meaning-making in the novel. This is done by combining traditional stylistic text analysis with the social semiotic approach to multimodal communication presented e.g. by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 2001, 2002), van Leeuwen (2005a, 2005b, 2006, 2011) and Machin (2007). In doing so, the book proposes a new branch of stylistics and adds to current multimodal theory by critiquing and adjusting its extant analytical tools. This chapter sets the scene for the rest of the book. It consists of a preliminary presentation of: a) the rationale behind developing a new, multimodal, branch of stylistics; b) the academic fields of stylistics and social semiotic multimodal theory; c) the kinds of novel that constitute the object of analysis of the study; d) the extended notion of “text” that informs the study; e) other approaches to multimodality in the novel and how this book differs from those approaches. Finally, the chapter also provides an overview of the structure of the book.
