A Critical Stylistic Study of Rhetorical Devices in Selected American Confessional Poems
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31185/lark.4266Keywords:
Key words: Stylistics, rhetorical devices, confessional poetry, Anna Sexton.Abstract
This study is dedicated to analyzing the rhetorical devices in selected American confessional poems. It focuses on the types of rhetorical devices employed in four selected confessional poems by the poet Anne Sexton. The study aims to identify the types of rhetorical devices used and their stylistic features within this genre. A qualitative analytical approach is adopted, utilizing the theories of Leech (1981) and Leech & Short (2007) to examine the selected data. The analysis reveals that the poems contain various rhetorical devices, including metaphor, irony, personification, and simile, which the poet employs to express her emotions and desires. Furthermore, the study identifies distinct stylistic features of these rhetorical devices, including the use of different lexical categories such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns, as well as diverse syntactic structures, including simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences. Additionally, these rhetorical devices contribute to textual cohesion and coherence, which is achieved through the use of pronouns, conjunctions, repetition, ellipsis, and cohesive markers.
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