Exploring the Lexical Features in O’ Henry’s Short Story “After Twenty Years”
Abstract
The current article is an attempt to find out the lexical features in O. Henry’s “After Twenty Years”. The lexical analysis of the short story has been done from the prism of stylistics in order to make the reader understand the role of those lexical features and also what role do they play in conveying the meaning of the short story. This study comprises of the stylistic analysis. The main focus of this research article is on the lexical features and what role do they pay in conveying the meaning to the story. Since the nature of research is theoretical, analytical, and descriptive, it has employed close reading and text-based analysis to the short story. While analyzing the short story “After Twenty Years”, amongst the checklists, lexical categories have been selected and it was conspicuous by the author’s use of nouns frequently amongst the major word classes. These nouns play a vital role in illustrating the characters, settings, and surroundings. Adjectives make up for the 3rd major portion from the word classes, which unfold the physical and psychological characteristics of the characters and the settings. Verbs are the 2nd most-frequently used word classes, and play a major role in the story. This role comprises meaning-making and that is attained through unfolding actions and to an extent by fulfilling a stative role in the story. Adverbs are least represented in the major word classes. They achieve different semantic functions such as manner, place, direction, time, and degree.
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