Stylistic Devices in Different Literary Extracts: A Stylistic Study

This present study makes an attempt to define stylistic devices and explains how they function in different literary extracts. It also elucidates the nature of stylistic devices and the effects they produce on the readers and listeners. Stylistic devices are tools of language that are used by writers and authors to create beauty, uniqueness, and novelty in the language. The expressive means of a language refer to the arrangement of sentences, clauses, words, and the choice of words that not only convey the idea to the reader or listener, but simultaneously provoke the desired emotional reaction from him. They are inherent in a language and used in ordinary speech by any speaker or writer, irrespective of stylistic purposes and effects. But the expressive means of a language may be employed with a definite stylistic aim and function in view. In such cases they are deliberately selected and arranged so as to create a certain stylistic effect. Any expressive means may be used in this way for specific artistic purposes, and when so employed, it is described as a stylistic device. The stylistic devices may be considered as an artistic transformation of an ordinary language phenomenon. They are linguistic resources that are used and employed deliberately to fulfill a stylistic function. Utterances usually communicate certain ideas and may also produce definite effects or arouse an emotion in the reader or listener. The aim of this paper is to discuss some stylistic devices at the levels of phonology, syntax and semantics. The discussion is provided by definitions of stylistic devices, nature, functions and the special effects they produce in literary texts.