Gatsby

ISSN 1798-4769
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 1, No. 5, pp. 662-667, September 2010
© 2010 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/jltr.1.5.662-667 Stylistic Analysis of The Great Gatsby from
Lexical and Grammatical Category
Xiangqi Liu
Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China
Email: [e-mail]
Abstract— The thesis tries to adopt the method used by Leech and Short in their book Style in Fiction to make a relatively overall and objective analysis of the novel’s language from lexical and grammatical Category. As far as the lexical features are concerned, the author employs special lexical items and lexical clusters. The lexical deviation and word connotations are mainly used for characterization and theme revelation. In terms of the syntactical aspects, narrative sentence type and the contrast of registers are employed, and the author’s sentence endings with elaborate appositions and prepositional phrases provide an effective way to describe the surroundings and evoke moods, serving to generate suspense as well as to create interest and expectation on the part of the reader.
Index Terms—lexical category, adjective, lexical cluster, grammatical category, sentence structure, appositional phrase, prepositional phrase

Stylistic analysis is an attempt to find the artistic principles underlying a writer’s choice of language. However, as all texts have their individual qualities, the linguistic features which recommend themselves to the attention in one text will not necessarily be important in another text by the same or a different author. Therefore, Leech and Short (2000: 74-82) propose a useful checklist of linguistic and stylistic categories which are placed under four general headings: lexical categories, grammatical categories, figures of speech, and cohesion and context, each containing several subcategories, and inevitably with some overlapping. Lexical categories are

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