Khalid Jabir Hani Al-Nasiri

The present paper attempts to scrutinize the pragmastylistic facets in Charles Dickens’s short story “Seven Dials” as an impressionistic sketch. It endeavours to identify the syntactic constructions and their related pragmatic features in addition to their significance in disclosing the writer’s intents. The study proposes that there is a relationship between the syntactic-pragmatic structures of the story and the targeted message of the writer. In order for this proposition to be validated, stylistics, pragmatics and pragmastylistics are briefly introduced. Then, the short sketch is analysed pragmastylistically in accordance with Leech and Short (2007), Quirk et al. (1985) and Searle (1979) models. Accordingly, the syntactic constructions and the illocutionary formulations of the sketch are investigated in detail arriving at the hypothesis that the writer has achieved his intended theme via his prevalent use of an assertive-complex structures in his story. Keywords: simple sentence (SS), compound sentence (CDS), complex sentence (CXS), speech act (SA), assertive speech act (ASA) and assertive-complex structure (ACS)

Stylistics is a widely used branch of linguistics in analysing literary works. It targets to identify the usages and meanings of literary texts and often attempts to discover the formal properties to show their significance in the interpretation and appreciation of such texts. The current study stylistically investigates Hemingway's "Old Man at the Bridge"with the aim of examining sentence length and sentences complexity. It ultimately aims to show the way the integration of linguistics within any literary text can be manipulated as a tool to reveal the message that may underlie texts.For analysing sentence length and complexity, Halliday's(1985) model has been used. The study has arrived at the fact that the variation in the length and complexity of sentences lead to elucidate the central ideas hidden in the story.