A COMPARATIVE STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF HUGHES’S THANK YOU, M’AM AND SANTIAGO’S SOMETHING COULD HAPPEN TO YOU

Abstract

Stylistic analysis is one of the most vital features in understanding literary texts. It enhances readers’ understanding and interpretation of literary pieces. Short states that “stylistic analysis is a method of linking linguistic form, via reader inference, to interpretation in a detailed way and thereby providing as much evidence as possible for and against particular interpretations of texts” (Short, 1996: 27). This study attempts to investigate how Langston Hughes and Esmeralda Santiago use their style of writing in their literary texts. The study applies the checklist of linguistics and stylistic categories introduced by Leech & Short to examine the stylistic differences and similarities between the two texts in terms of the use of adjectives and sentence complexity. In both texts, the former is a fictional short story, and the latter is a non-fictional text, the adjectives and sentence length will be counted and measures. The frequency of adjectives will be compared against the norm in the prose texts and sentences length will be compared against the norm in modern English language.

Key words: Stylistic analysis; fictional and non-fictional texts; Frequency of adjectives; Sentence length.

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