Specifics of literary devices in J. F. Stephens’s public speech about people with Down syndrome (based on the speech “I am a man”)

The aim of the research is to identify the literary devices used in J. F. Stephens’s speech “I am a man” and determine their specific characteristics. The article examines the text of J. F. Stephens’s public speech, which addresses the challenges of adapting individuals with Down syndrome in modern society. The work identifies the literary devices used and defines their specific features. The scientific novelty of the research lies in its being the first to provide data on the specifics of literary devices in an English-language journalistic text focusing on the social integration of people with developmental disabilities. This type of text is unique because its author, the speaker, is a person with Down syndrome. Despite his developmental differences, J. F. Stephens was invited to speak at a UN meeting and therefore became one of the few people to be honored with such an opportunity. As a result, the research revealed that the author employs various lexical (metaphor, pun, epithet), syntactic (parallelism, enumeration, anaphora, polysyndeton), and lexico-syntactic (antithesis, logical comparison, gradation) literary devices, as well as medical terminology in a stylistic function, to convey his ideas.