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Stylistics is a new course introduced in the curricula of English departments in Algeria. It stems from the LMD system which started eight years ago at some universities and has become widespread in recent years. The aim of this article is to introduce the field first by glancing at its main characteristics and then to illustrate it with an analysis of Act 3, scene 3 of William Shakespeare’s Othello. We shall end with a comparison with a classical literary analysis of this same scene. Our past research in the field of stylistics makes us draw the following characteristics: it is first an area of mediation between literary criticism and linguistics or between language and literature. It is mainly based on the relation between pattern and meaning, namely that structure and meaning form one. Besides, the areas stylistics is linked to are linguistics, civilization, history, psychology. It began in the 1960’s with Roman Jacobson’s Russian Formalism and the material studied is mainly literary. It is interested in a pattern in a clause, paragraph, or text at large which is purposefully repeated that might signal a foregrounding, namely, linguistic features are highlighted, made prominent for specific effects and contribute to the text’s total meaning. Repetitive patterns of sound or syntax, for example, strike the reader’s conscious attention as unusual. Foregrounding includes linguistic deviations, parallelisms, and repetitions which authors use for specific effect and communicative purposes and which contribute to the general interpretation of the text. In his book Text and Discourse, M.A.K Halliday defines it as patterns of prominence in a poem or prose text, regularities in the sounds or words or structures that stand out or may be brought out by careful reading; and one may often be led in this way towards a new insight through finding that such prominence contributes to the writer’s total meaning (98).If we look at Act 3,scene 3, we are going to notice that there is a shift of pronouns from first- person to third -person and vice versa very repeatedly and from general statements to personal involvements in a conspicuously repeated fashion; this is what we call ‘foregrounding’ and studying them will unveil the key to the interpretation of each of the characters’ motivations and therefore will give us a whole interpretation of the scene and Iago’s skillfulness in manipulating his victim, Othello. This is what Katie Wales means when she mentions that it is on this internal foregrounding that critical attention is largely focused (157) or when M.A.K Halliday points out that such prominence contributes to the writer’s total meaning (98).
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