Foundations of Stylistics: For EFL University Students

Abstract

Foundations of Stylistics: For EFL University Students is an introductory textbook in the Applied Linguistics branch of the English Language Studies for EFL University Students series. It is designed for international EFL university students and assumes no previous course in stylistics. Its fifteen chapters and seventy-five teaching sections examine language choices and patterns in literary and everyday texts. Topics include context and register, vocabulary, grammar, sound and written form, foregrounding, figurative language, cohesion, agency and modality, pragmatics, narrative perspective, and the presentation of speech and thought. Later chapters introduce public and digital texts, multimodality, corpus-assisted analysis, comparison, and controlled rewriting. The book supports approximately 35–45 contact hours, with additional time for independent reading and practice. Chapters include central questions, roadmaps, explanations, worked examples, guided activities, checks, five Practice and Apply tasks, explained answers, review infographics, key terms, and short quizzes. Students connect exact textual evidence with cautious interpretations, compare alternative readings, and test claims against the text. Unattributed passages, dialogues, notices, posters, and teaching datasets are original constructions. The book distinguishes these materials from the brief authentic literary excerpts credited to their sources. AI-use disclosure: The textbook was developed with assistance from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and NotebookLM for research, drafting, revision, visual development, and production. The credits identify original ChatGPT Images illustrations in the learning roadmaps and review infographics, and original ChatGPT Images artwork in the covers, with separate typesetting. Munassir Alhamami, the Project Director, is responsible for the final editorial decisions and released version. This is the First Edition, Version 1 (2026), provided as a free digital textbook. Except where otherwise stated, the original content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Material credited to other sources remains subject to the terms stated for that material. Readers should cite the source and identify adaptations. Series website: https://sites.google.com/view/els4efl/home