(Luận văn thạc sĩ) an investigation into stylistic devices in english contemporary short stories

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY TRẦN ÁI VI AN INVESTIGATION INTO STYLISTIC DEVICES IN ENGLISH CONTEMPORARY SHORT STORIES h Field: English Linguistics Code: 8.22.02.01 Supervisor: HÀ THANH HẢI, Ph.D BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN TRẦN ÁI VI NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC BIỆN PHÁP TU TỪ TRONG TRUYỆN NGẮN ĐƯƠNG ĐẠI TIẾNG ANH h Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8.22.02.01 Người hướng dẫn: TS HÀ THANH HẢI i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify that the substance of this thesis has not already been submitted for any degree and is not currently being submitted for any other degree or award I also declare that any help received to successfully complete this thesis, and all sources employed, have been acknowledged in this thesis Binh Dinh, 2021 Tran Ai Vi h ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many individuals both academically and personally have been considered as important parts of my journey Without their support, the accomplishment of my study would have never been perfect First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my respectable supervisor, Dr Ha Thanh Hai for his considerable encouragement, timely enlightenment through valuable comments on every piece of my work Thanks to his great experience on Stylistic Devices, I have been expertly guided throughout the thesis And without his support, my study could not be perfectly completed I genuinely appreciate and learn a great deal from his intellectuality, dedication, and professionalism Additionally, I would like to thank all the lecturers of my master‟s h course at Quy Nhon University, who helped me to upgrade my knowledge and my skills of Linguistics during my course They all definitely play a vital role in enriching my high interest in linguistic research to further explore other aspects of both the English and Vietnamese languages I am also indebted to the authors and experts whose works have been cited in the Literature Review part of my study Last but not least, my special thanks are extended to my family, my friends who always stand by me, motivate and support me to participate in this course, and fully concentrate on completing the course and my thesis, and confidently overcome all the challenges and obstacles during the time of my study iii ABSTRACT The thesis is a study of identifying the types and functions of figures of speech in English contemporary short stories.This study is aimed to examine types of figures of speech and investigate the significant of them into in English contemporary short stories A combination of descriptive, quantitative and qualitative methods is employed to use for data analysis The data of this research is 20 English contemporary short stories of the U.S and England from 2000 to 2019.The study points out that there are ten of twelve types of figures of speech found based on Perrine‟s theory, namely metaphor, simile, personification, metonymy, synecdoche, symbol, paradox, overstatement, understatement, and irony Simile is the most frequently used, and metonymy ranks at the lowest point in the data of study As for the effects they create for h the stories, there are four functions of these figures of speech found based on Perrine‟s theory: to afford imaginative pleasure, to bring an additional imagery, to add emotional intensity, and to say much in a brief compass.The study hopefully contributes to the procedure of teaching, and learning English in particular and encourages them to use the stylistic device in writing to make their written papers more beautiful and attractive iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 1.2.1 Aims 1.2.2 Objectives 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Scope of the study h 1.5 Significance of the Study 1.6 Design of the study CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Stylistic devices 2.1.1 The Definition of Figure of Speech 2.1.2 Types of Figure Speeches 10 2.1.3 Functions of figures of speech 19 2.2 Contemporary short stories 22 2.2.1 Definition 22 2.2.2 Features of short stories 23 2.3 Previous studies 26 CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 29 3.1 Research methods 29 3.2 Research procedure 29 3.3 Data collection 30 v 3.4 Data analysis 31 3.5 Reliability and validity 32 3.6 Summary 32 CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 33 4.1 Findings 33 4.2 The types of stylistic devices in 20 English contemporary short stories 36 4.2.1 Metaphor 36 4.2.2 Simile 37 4.2.3 Personification 39 4.2.4 Symbol 41 4.2.5 Overstatement 41 4.2.6 Understatement 43 4.2.7 Irony 43 h 4.2.8 Paradox 45 4.2.9 Metonymy 45 4.2.10 Synecdoche 46 4.3 The functions of stylistic devices in 20 English contemporary short stories 47 4.3.1 To afford imaginative pleasure 47 4.3.2 To bring an additional imagery 48 4.3.3 To add emotional intensity 49 4.3.4 To say much in a brief compass 50 CHAPTER CONCLUSION 53 5.1 Summary of Findings 53 5.2 Implications 55 5.3 Limitations 56 5.4 Recommendation for further study 56 REFERENCES 57 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1 General view of types and functions of figures of speech 33 Table 4.2 The frequency of figures of speech in 20 short stories 35 h CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication The scientific study of language in any of its senses is called linguistics It has brought to the subject of semantics a certain degree of analysis combined with a view of the study of meaning as an integrated component within the total theory of how language works When we study about linguistic, we will know about semantics which study the meaning In English we know that meaning has important position to study because it will create some effects when someone tries to understand h what the speakers or the writers mean When creating a piece of writing as a literary text, the writer has to use words to express his denotative and connotative meanings To have good quality of art, a writer not only has to use words effectively, colorfully but also has to use stylistic devices to make his writing more interesting and more persuasive In literature and writing, using stylistic devices gives an auxiliary meaning, idea, or feeling Indeed, the frequent use of stylistic devices is an important element to make the literature more attractive and lively Particularly, the use of stylistic devices in their written papers has great impact on the readers Under stylistics, figure of speech is one of language style aspects commonly discussed Also under stylistics, language style can be seen as figurative language through figures of speech Leech & Short (2007) pointed out that figures of speech are the features which are foregounded by virtue of departing in some way from general norms of communication by means of the language code Indeed, many researches have been done on figures of speech of literary texts like poems (Perrine, 1987), prose texts (Leech & Short, 2007), and short stories (Abet, 2019) This domain of research is spread to the setting of education for student researchers as well (Simpson, 2004) It can be said that most of the studies made a great effort to understand the famous writer and their typical works like Hemingway‟s novels, O‟Henry‟s short stories, or Emily Dickinson „s poems It is clear that short stories not only use denotative meaning to express message from the author but also connotative meaning which is used to express agreement, disagreement, happiness, unhappiness, etc, conveyed to the listeners or readers Many kinds of figures of speech give us so much h information in which they use non literal meaning of words For example, some sentences in the story use figurative language to make it more beautiful, interesting and imaginative Figurative language is language using figures of speech (a way of saying one thing and meaning another) There are many types of figurative language such as: metaphor, simile, symbols, hyperbola, irony, etc But in general, the figurative language is differentiated into groups in terms of their meanings by comparison, by association and by contrast These figurative languages are famous in society, and also in the field of education starting from elementary school up to the university level (Simpson, 2004) The proved importance of understanding the stylistic devices or figures of speech in literary texts and the insufficient analysis in contemporary short stories encouraged the author of this thesis to conduct the study on stylistic devices used in English contemporary short stories from 2000 to 2019 to