A Stylistic Analysis of Parker's Short Story “A Telephone Call”

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to perform a thorough stylistic analysis of Dorothy Parker's short story "A Telephone Call". The study investigates the four language levels that are relevant to the short story are planned to be stylistically analyzed in this study. The phonological level includes four sound features: alliteration, consonance, assonance, and rhymes. The syntactic level is characterized by the story's frequent use of parallelism and repetition. The use of sophisticated synonyms significantly affects the story's semantic level. The author was able to map semantically unrelated words together, making them synonyms in context. Finally, the graphological level is distinguished by excessive use of punctuation, which includes commas, semicolons, inverted commas, dashes, and hyphens. The study also employs three types of figures of speech: simile, personification and understatement. The author uses a variety of linguistic and poetic devices to demonstrate her distinct style, making her more compelling to the reader.