The Language and Literature Reader

Book excerpt: The Language and Literature Reader is an invaluable resource for students of English literature, language, and linguistics. Bringing together the most significant work in the field with integrated editorial material, this Reader is a structured and accessible tool for the student and scholar. Divided into three sections, Foundations, Developments and New Directions, the Reader provides an overview of the discipline from the early stages in the 1960s and 70s, through the new theories and practices of the 1980s and 90s, to the most recent and contemporary work in the field. Each article contains a brief introduction by the editors situating it in the context of developing work in the discipline and glossing it in terms of the section and of the book as a whole. The final section concludes with a ‘history and manifesto’, written by the editors, which places developments in the area of stylistics within a brief history of the field and offers a polemical perspective on the future of a growing and influential discipline.