Opposition in Discourse: The Construction of Oppositional Meaning

✍ Scribed by Lesley Jeffries

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 161
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Lesley Jeffries introduces a phenomenon which has not been given the attention it deserves - the contextual construction of oppositional meaning. These are opposites not recognisable as such out of context but that are clearly set up this way in the text concerned. The significance of oppositional meaning is well-known, and has been discussed by scholars for millennia, from Philosophy to Politics. But the main emphasis has always been on the conventional opposite: the opposite recognised by lexical semantics. Starting from socio-cultural viewpoints, moving to original research and then concluding with a new theoretical formulation, this book introduces and consolidates a significant new approach to the analysis of oppositional meaning. It closes with a discussion of the importance of constructed opposition in hegemonic practice and makes a case for the inclusion of opposition as a central tool of critical discourse analysis. It will be essential reading for researchers and graduates in stylistics, linguistics and language studies.

✦ Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 What are opposites?
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Opposition: A history of ideas
1.3 Opposition in logic and maths
1.4 Opposition in language
1.5 Contextual features of opposition
1.6 Structure of the book
Chapter 2 How opposites are constructed in texts and what they mean
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Earlier studies of opposition in context
2.3 Structural triggers of opposition
2.4 Lexical triggers of opposition
2.5 Meanings and local textual functions of constructed opposition
Chapter 3 Literary effects of constructed opposition
3.1 Introduction – opposites in literary works
3.2 Opposition-creation in the poems of Mebdh McGuckian and Carol Ann Duffy
3.3 Larkin’s ‘Talking in Bed’ – questioning the world in poetry
3.4 Novel openings1
3.5 Conclusion: The role(s) of unconventional opposites in literature
Chapter 4 The role of opposition-construction in discourse meanings
4.1 Introduction – opposites in non-literary texts
4.2 British General Election reporting
4.3 Responses to 9/11
4.4 The female body
4.5 Those Danish cartoons
4.6 Conclusion: The role(s) of unconventional opposition in non-literary texts
Chapter 5 The significance of opposition in language and texts
5.1 A theory of opposites
5.2 Mental representations and schemata: The cognitive basis of opposites
5.3 Conceptual metaphors, mental spaces and text worlds
5.4 Opposition-creation and ideology
5.5 Opposition and universality
Notes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Bibliography
Index