Stylistic Devices In Michael Moore‘s Screenplay “Fahrenheit 9/11”

Stylistic devices in Michael Moore‘s screenplay “Fahrenheit 9/11”.

The introduction introduces the object of the study, the methods used in the research, the amount of the examples selected from the source book.

The theoretical part is for the discussion of the aspects of a screenplay in general, and aspects of the source screenplay Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore. The further discussion is focused on stylistics, stylistic analysis, and stylistic devices, which is important for the study since it is associated with the analysis of lexical and syntactical stylistic devices. The empirical part is divided into two groups, which introduce with the peculiarities of lexical and syntactic devices, and also their practical usage in the screenplay.

In references and sources section the used material is listed in alphabetical order.

All collected examples from the screenplay are gathered in the Appendix 1.

A survey of theoretical issues necessary for analysis is presented below.

It can be noticed that all definitions refers to the terms words and text. Therefore a conclusion that screenplay is a text can be drawn. Consequently, the very term text has its peculiar nature, which is presented differently in various sources. There are many definitions for the term text, because many linguists have been working on the area for a long time, trying to deliver the most specific definition. British linguist John Lyons defines texts as constituents of the contexts, which is created by the texts produced by speakers and writers in specific situations. (Lyons 1995:258) The same idea is expressed in The Linguistics Encyclopedia (1991:621) While David Crystal mentions the intention of storing texts, “Texts <...> refer to a stretch of language recorded for the purpose of analysis and description” (Crystal 2008:483). He also emphasizes that the text may be written or spoken. Furthermore it appears of various types, for example, conversations, rituals, reports, poems, road signs, etc. (Ibid)

In many sources text is defined as inseparable from the concept discourse. If to refer to dictionary of linguistics, text is an equivalent to discourse. (CODL) Nevertheless, according to linguist D. Crystal some linguists, working on critical discourse analysis claim that there is distance between text and discourse. However, he also notes that the idea of stretch is undeveloped, because the notion of cohesion in both is already a proof of this. (Crystal 2008:148)

Referring to the above mentioned facts and considering the text as equivalent to discourse, screenplay can be regarded as one of many discourse types. What is more, if to look at screenplay’s surface, it is obvious that the major features of a screenplay are characters and dialogues between them. As a result, dialogues are a kind of discourse. What concerns dialogue as a discourse, linguist P. Simpson reveals the year of early 1980s as a time for strong interest in dialogue in literature sphere. (Simpson 2004:34) Moreover, at that time there was an issue about the literature as a discourse too. Despite the fact of unclear literature’s future as a discourse, it was undeniable that literature is a natural language use in a particular context. A developing field of discourse stylistics raised a great interest in drama dialogue. For this reason a lot of early works in discourse stylistics were associated with the study of dialogues in plays. (Ibid)