A comparative stylistic analysis of selected Zimbabwean and South African fiction (2000-2015)

Abstract

This study seeks to develop a new comprehensive, dynamic and ever-evolving stylistic analytical model that integrates linguistics and poetics. The Multi-perspectival Stylistic Model (MSM), is proposed in this study with the intention to demonstrate that human reality as depicted in poetic discourse and presented through languaging is nuanced, heterogenous and multifaceted therefore cannot be fully explored and understood from a single theoretical perspective but rather requires a transdisciplinary approach. One of the fundamental qualities of the Multi-perspectival Stylistics Model is that textual features are read as both contextual and linguistic clues that work for semantic effect. Thus, deliberate attention is paid to textual details to check on intuitively formulated semantic arguments. The study argues that it is necessary for both linguists and literary scholars to become rhizomatic researchers and rethink linguistics and poetics beyond disciplinary confinement. This means moving away from “striated “disciplinary spaces in search of “smooth” spaces that embrace flexibility, expansion and diversity. In other words, there is need to forfeit the “tree structures” of epistemological approaches and take new research trajectories in both linguistics and poetics. The Multi-perspectival stylistic model proposed in this study presents a shift from linear thinking. It cannot be over-emphasized that contemporary stylistic models should take diverse pathways contrary to arboreal conceptions of knowledge construction. The analyses and discussions in this study show that interpretation needs to integrate both objective and subjective approaches to avoid “false analytical ruptures” that ignore the relevant attributes of the previous epistemic models in both linguistics and poetics. Linguistics makes significant contributions to the reading and interpretation of literary discourse. Researchers should live outside the current state of affairs and occupy a position in a plane of immanence in order to problematise the status quo or working with prescriptions imposed by disciplinary traditions or “ways of doing things” usually stated by the watchful eyes of ‘fathers and mothers’ in the academia. The engagement with the various conceptual frameworks in this study has indicated the need for rhizomatic conversations across diverse disciplines, thereby breaking with traditions and exploring new avenues. The study recommends that contemporary stylistic models should accommodate conceptual and cross-disciplinary conversations essential for multiple entryways and exits in both linguistics and poetics. Furthermore, an on-going philosophical inquiry that continues to interrogate existing epistemologies and practices in order to find new areas of engagement is most needful at this juncture and the Multi-perspectival Stylistic Model is hoped to be one such trans-disciplinary approach.