The Stylistics of 'You'

Sandrine Sorlin is Professor of English Linguistics at University Paul-Valéry – Montpellier (France), specialising in stylistics and pragmatics. Her latest book Language and Manipulation in House of Cards (2016) received an award from the European Society for the Study of English. She co-edited The Pragmatics of Personal Pronouns (2015) and edited Stylistic Manipulation of the Reader in Contemporary Fiction (Bloomsbury 2020). She is also assistant editor of Language and Literature.

'Because it is surprising how the second person may be wrapped up in many guises, and because Sorlin has presented concepts a writer may find helpful in thinking about their relationship with their audience, it is a book that may well be worth diving into.' Linda M. Davis, Technical Communication

• 1. Theorising the 'you effects'; Part I. Singularising and Sharing: the Dialectics of 'You': 2. George Orwell's Down and out in Paris and London (1933): Putting yourself in the shoes of a tramp; 3. Paul Auster's ordinary life and yours: blendable singularities?; Part II. The Role of 'You' in the Writing of Traumatic Events: 4. Performing 'self-othering' in Winter Birds (1994) by Jim Grimsley; 5. Pronominal 'veering' in Quilt (2010) by Nicholas Royle; Part III. The Author-Reader Channel across Time, Tender, Sex and Race: 6. Two ways of conversing with the reader; 7. Empathy for sexual minorities in Skin Lane by Neil Bartlett (2007); 8. The ethics and politics of the second person in 'postcolonial' writing; Part IV. New Ways of Implicating through the Digital Medium?: 9. From paratext to hypertext: interactivity revisited; 10. Coercing without edifying: Kevin Spacey's 2018 'Creepy' YouTube video explained; Conclusion; References; Index.