A Semantic Analysis of Some Rhetorical Devices in the Stories: James Joyce’s “A Mother” and Graham Greene’s “The End of the Party”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21271/zjhs.30.SpB.34Keywords:
rhetorical devices, Joyce’s story A Mother, Greene’s story The End of the Party, meaningAbstract
The present study is an attempt to tackle the role of rhetorical devices in two selected short stories. The purpose of the study is to provide a semantic analysis of some rhetorical devices in these two stories “A Mother” by James Joyce and “The End of the Party” by Graham Greene. The rhetorical devices are a group of language elements used by authors for the enhancement of meaning in literary works for stylistic purposes. The study uses lexical semantics approach as a theoretical model to discuss five rhetorical devices semantically, namely simile, metaphor, personification, irony and metonymy. The researcher focused on a descriptive qualitative method to identify and investigate the meaning and use of each rhetorical device in various extracts of the fore-mentioned stories to demonstrate the impact of these devices upon the reader. The findings of the study indicate that the rhetorical devices play different roles in the literary texts, such as constructing meaning, emphasizing meaning and contradicting meaning. In addition to the esthetic role, rhetorical devices are known as “persuasive devices”, playing a seminal role in the philosophy of language for persuading readers of the notions provided by the authors in question.
References
- Alm-Arvius, C. 2003. Figures of Speech. Studentlitteratur Group.
- Bahadur, R. R. N. 1960. Elements of English Rhetoric and prosody. (19th ed.). Huckervertty: Chatterjee.
- Barrios, A. G. 2012. Zoomorphism: An Analytic Model for Drama Characters. Chinese Semiotic Studies. 8 (1), pp. 455-468. available at: https://www.academia.edu/104161474/Zoomorphism. [Accessed: 10 July 2025]
- Coppens, C. 1986. A Practical Introduction to English Rhetoric: precepts and exercises. (2nd ed.). Catholic Publication Society.
- Crystal, D. 2003. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. (5th ed.). Blackwell Publishing.
- Cuddon, J. A. 1984. A Dictionary of Literary Terms. Penguin Books, USA.
- Fahnestock, J. 2011. Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Garmendia, J. 2018. Irony: Key concepts in semantics and pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Greene, V. 1955. Twenty One Short Stories. Vintage Classics Publications.
- Harris, R. A. 2010. A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices. London: Routledge.
-Harris, R. A. 2018. Writing with Clarity and Style: A Guide to Rhetorical Devices for Contemporary Writers. (2nd ed.). Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group.
- Hawkes, T. 1986. Metaphor: The Critical Idiom. Methuem, USA.
- Jasiniski, J. 2001. Sourcebook on Rhetoric: Key Concepts in Contemporary Rhetorical Studies. Sage Publications.
- Joyce, J. 2005. The Dubliners. ICON International Group, USA.
- Kelen, C. 2007. An Introduction to Rhetorical Terms. Tirril Hall, Humanities Books.
- Kovecses, Z. 2010. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Matthews, P. H. 2007. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of linguistics. (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Nelson, G. and Greenbaum, S. 2016. An Introduction to English Grammar. (4th ed.). Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Nawzad Hassan Qadir, Suhayla Hameed Majeed
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
