An investigation into lexical stylistic devices describing The appearance of charactersIn english and vietnamese prose

Abstract

Based on the theory of stylistics, this study makes an investigation into the Lexical Stylistic Devices Describing the Appearance of Characters in English and Vietnamese Prose in an attempt to discover some commonly used lexical stylistic devices and then finds out the similarities and differences in terms of the use of lexical stylistic devices describing the appearance of characters. The findings obtained from the analysis show that Epithet, metaphor, simile, oxymoron, hyperbole and irony are the most common lexical stylistic devices describing the appearance of characters. They have many things in common. Vividness, attractiveness and peculiarity are prominent in the appearance’s description in EP and VP. Besides, all these lexical stylistic devices share several similarities in their effects on the readers. Epithet, simile and metaphor are the most popular in describing the appearance of characters. With regard to differences, reduplication is very popular and powerful in Vietnamese whilst it can not be found in English. In addition, the image of human beings and artifacts are employed in metaphor in English whereas legendary characters are frequently used in Vietnamese. Finally, so… that and numerical hyperbole can not be found in Vietnamese. Hopefully, the result of the study can be somewhat beneficial for teaching and learning of English. This study may also be helpful for literary students as well as literary criticism.