VEJOH - VERITAS JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES

This paper asserts that language and literary studies are a twosome and calls on experts in the ‘twin’ disciplines to tap from each other for mutually beneficial ends. Language is the means by which literature is created and literature becomes the exemplification of linguistic novelty, the platform where we experience language as it is in its everyday, aesthetic, rhetoric, profane, esoteric and sublime uses. The paper reveals that both in their conceptualisation and practice, language and literature rely on each other. The literary artist and critic must be conversant with linguistic methods to function profitably and the language analyst must make recourse to literature for data for linguistic studies. Among others, aspects that establish their relationship include language and literary pedagogy, literary creativity itself with language as its tool, stylistics, linguistic analysis of literary texts, creative figurative uses of language. Therefore, it is needless to create boundaries and dichotomies between subjects that rely on each other. Rather, it is recommended that the perceived dichotomies be pulled down to allow a harvest of knowledge from both sides.

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