Feminist stylistics

     Feminist stylistics can be defined as the sub-branch of stylistics which aims to account for the way in which gender concerns are linguistically encoded in texts, and which attempts to do so by employing some of the frameworks and models pertaining in the stylistics tool-kit. However, the phrase ‘gender concerns’ can encompass a plurality of meanings which has given rise to the multifaceted perspectives from which the notion of gender has been approached. One of those perspectives is offered by feminist stylistic analyses which, along with other approaches to the study of language and gender on the one hand and feminism on the other, conceive of gender in a rather fluid and adaptable way. Feminist stylisticians’ contribution to the study of gender has traditionally illustrated how the interface of gender issues and language materializes in literary texts, but such a focus should not be understood as exclusive (Burke , 2014 ). The label ‘feminist stylistics’ should be properly credited to Mills (1995) because, although she was not the first stylistician to implement a feminist stylistics perspective, she was nonetheless the one who coined the term and described more fully the practices of this sub-branch. Feminist Stylistics (1995) remains even today, almost twenty-years after its publication, a ground-breaking work in the field. It provides an insight into aspects of feminist writing, on the one hand, and stylistics, on the other hand. The concern to change language which discriminated against women and which seemed to be little and trivialize those activities associated with women was a key concern for feminist theorists and activists, trying to change the way that women were represented in advertisements, newspapers and magazines, and also the way that they were named and addressed in texts and in interaction.  Feminist stylistics introduces readers for various problems and skills in text analysis to answer the questions asked especially in a feminist perspective. The aim of feminists therefore was to call attention to the way in which the use of certain language items seemed to systematically discriminate against and cause offence to women, by compiling lists of such language items in dictionaries and calling for people and institutions to avoid such language use. Most feminists also hold a belief that society is organized in such a way that it works, in general, to the benefit of men rather than women; that it is patriarchal. By incorporating feminist theory into stylistics, Mills came up with her theory on Feminist Stylistics. women are collectively treated in an oppressive way that differs from the way men are treated. In addition, they, women, suffer from discrimination at the personal and institutional level. That society generally and systematically works to the benefit of men not women is another belief held by feminists. The aim of feminist stylistics, then, is twofold: on the one hand, analysts investigate the way text producers employ linguistic features which specifically project male or female values; but also, stylisticians consider the way readers (or, indeed, advertising, cinema or radio audiences, and many other types of discourse participants, for that matter) advertently or inadvertently identify specific gendered meanings in texts. In order to understand the dual aim which characterizes feminist stylistic approaches, it is helpful to first pay attention to the way general theoretical approaches to language and gender studies on the one hand, and linguistic feminism, on the other, have evolved and have come to influence feminist stylistic work . Feminist stylistics introduces readers to a range of issues and skills in the analysis of texts from a feminist perspective. Feminist analysis aims to draw attention to and change the way that gender is represented, since it is clear that a great many of these representational practices are not in the interests of either women or men. Feminist stylistic analysis is concerned not only to describe sexism in a text, but also to analyze the way that point of view, agency, metaphor, or transitivity are unexpectedly closely related to matters of gender, to discover whether women’s writing practices can be described, and so on .