LINGUISTIC SCIENCE AND LITERARY CRITICISM: A Study of Possible Relationships

The thesis that linguistic science can be related to the art of literary criticism is a provocative one, for the very nomenclatures smack of the seventeenth century dichotomy of art and science that continues to the present day. It is the purpose of this paper to investigate the possibilities of using linguistic tools and methods to criticize literary works in conjunction with established critical procedures. As investigation of this thesis proceeded, it became evident that both the linguist and the critic work with different levels of structure and meaning. In this chapter these various levels of subject matter will be discussed and defined in order to give a frame of reference to subsequent chapters