Stylistic Analysis of Selected Short Stories by O. Henry

Abstract

This thesis is mainly devoted to analyzing translation linguistic competence and translation transfer competence in O. Henry’s selected short stories, using stylistic analyses. These analyses depend on certain features devised by the writer. These features contribute to meaning-making and raising the aesthetic or artistic value of the short stories. The researcher intends to use the approach suggested by Leech and Short-linguistic and stylistic categories to analyze the selected short stories by O. Henry. Accordingly, the researcher bases his analysis on lexical categories, grammatical categories, cohesion and context, and figures of speech. The researcher has been applied to stylistically analyze selected short stories by O. Henry. In order to carry out the stylistic analysis, four different short stories involving “After Twenty Years”, “A Harlem Tragedy”, “A Furnished Room”; and “The Last Leaf” a checklist of linguistic and stylistic categories suggested by Leech and Short (2007) has been applied as a theoretical framework. Each of the four of the short stories the researcher mentioned in this paper are rich enough to be stylistically analyzed by applying three of the checklists (lexical categories, grammatical categories, cohesion and context) mentioned in the story. This much is the potential of O. Henry in addressing message across to his readers. The researcher would like to take this opportunity to invite those who are new to his works to read and enjoy his short stories.