"Style: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy conducts an in-depth investigation into the long and complex evolution of style in the study of rhetoric and writing. The theories, research methods, and pedagogies covered here offer a conception of style as more than decoration or correctness—views that are still prevalent in many college settings as well as in public discourse. The book begins by tracing origins of style in sophistic-era Greece, moving from there to alternative and non-Western rhetorical traditions, showing style as always inventive and even at times subversive. Although devalued in subsequent periods, including the twentieth century, contemporary views now urge for renewed attention to the scholarly and pedagogical possibilities of style as experimentation and risk, rather than as safety and conformity. These contemporary views include work in areas of rhetoric and composition, such as basic writing, language difference, digital and multimodal discourse, feminist rhetorics, and rhetorical grammar. Later chapters in this book also explore a variety of disciplines and research methods—sociolinguistics and dialectology, literary and rhetorical stylistics, discourse and conversation analysis, and World Englishes. Finally, teachers and students will appreciate a final chapter that explains practical teaching methods, provides ideas for assignments and activities, and surveys textbooks that promote a rhetorical stance toward style."
(Brian Ray, 2015)
Ray, B. (2015). Style: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy, Parlor Press.
"The Public Domain Review is a not–for–profit project dedicated to showcasing the most interesting and unusual out–of–copyright works available online.
All works eventually fall out of copyright–from classic works of art, music and literature, to abandoned drafts, tentative plans, and overlooked fragments. In doing so they enter the public domain, a vast commons of material that everyone is free to enjoy, share and build upon without restriction.
(Adam Green and Jonathan Gray)
Fig.1 [http://publicdomainreview.org/2011/08/15/labillardiere–and–his–relation/], Fig.2 [http://publicdomainreview.org/2012/07/30/the–flowers–personified–1847/]
"International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation is an international publication that provides a forum for discussing the nature and potential of creativity and innovation in design from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Design creativity and innovation is truly an interdisciplinary academic research field that will interest and stimulate researchers of engineering design, industrial design, architecture, art, and similar areas. The journal aims to not only promote existing research disciplines but also pioneer a new one that lies in the intermediate area between the domains of systems engineering, information technology, computer science, social science, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and related fields. The journal welcomes various kinds of research papers (analytical studies, constructive studies, case studies, field studies, literature surveys, etc.) that will establish the basis for the academic discipline of design creativity and innovation."
"Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically 'dead' (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn–out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a 'rift,' for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase."
(George Orwell)
George Orwell (1950). "Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays", Secker & Warburg Publishers, UK.
Montag (Oskar Werner) 'reads' his illustrated newspaper in bed. The scene is from François Truffaut's classic film treatment of Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel about a dystopian world where written books have been outlawed.