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A Linguistic Stylistic Analysis of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

Received: 24 August 2020    Accepted: 10 September 2020    Published: 7 October 2020
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Abstract

Literary texts have largely been analysed from the perspective of literary criticism, literary stylistics. This paper is a linguistic stylistic analysis of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House. The principal aim of the paper of the paper is to identify and analyse linguistic features used in the play. For a systematic analysis, these linguistic features are clustered into phonological, graphological, lexical, grammatical and semantic levels of analysis. A Doll’s House is a play that explores family relationships, friendship and patriarchy among other thematic concerns. Helmer Torvald, one of the main characters, is the embodiment of hegemonic masculinity in the play. The study adopted a desktop research; the researcher read the text and identified linguistic features which he intuitively felt to be stylistically foregrounded. The results show that the author has effectively used linguistic features to develop the themes and characters of the play. The study concludes that stylistics provides the linguistic toolkit instrumental not only for the analysis and understanding of a given text, but also for the performance of the acted forms of art like a play (drama). Linguistic stylistics is a tool that can be used to analyse any form of text.

Published in International Journal of Language and Linguistics (Volume 8, Issue 5)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijll.20200805.13
Page(s) 205-215
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

A Doll’s House, Doll, Lexical, Linguistic, Patriarchy, Stylistics

References
[1] Crystal, D. & Davy, D. (1969). Investigating English style. London: Longman.
[2] Verdonk, P. (2002). Stylistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[3] Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: a resource book for students. New York: Routledge.
[4] Wales, K. (2011). A Dictionary of stylistics (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.
[5] Ibsen, H. (2017). A doll’s house. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers.
[6] Leech, G. N. & Short, M. H. (1981). Style in fiction. A linguistic introduction to fictional prose. London: Longman.
[7] Bussmann, H. (ed.) (1996). Routledge dictionary of language and linguistics. New York: Routledge.
[8] Bradford, R. (1997). Stylistics. New York: Routledge.
[9] Widdowson, H. G. (2013). Stylistics and the teaching of literature. New York: Routledge.
[10] Leech, G. (2013). Language in literature: style and foregrounding. New York: Routledge.
[11] Baseer et al. (2013). The Use of Symbolic Language in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House: a feminist perspective. Language in India. Vol. 13: 3, pp. 622-630.
[12] Hooti et al. (2011). Henrik Ibsen‘s A Doll’s House: A Postmodernist Study. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 1, No. 9, pp. 1103-1110.
[13] Otieno, T. M. (2015). Linguistic description of the rhetoric: Barack Obama’s political speeches. IOSR Journal of humanities and social sciences, Vol. 20: 9, pp. 80-92.
[14] Norgaard et al. (2010). Key terms in stylistics. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.
[15] Leech, G. N. (1969). A linguistic guide to English poetry. London: Longman.
[16] Short, M. (2002). From dramatic text to dramatic performance. In exploring the language of drama, (ed.). Culpeper et al. New York: Routledge.
[17] Cruse, A. (2006). A glossary of semantics and pragmatics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
[18] Lakoff, G. & Mark, J. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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  • APA Style

    Tom Mboya Otieno. (2020). A Linguistic Stylistic Analysis of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 8(5), 205-215. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20200805.13

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    ACS Style

    Tom Mboya Otieno. A Linguistic Stylistic Analysis of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 2020, 8(5), 205-215. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20200805.13

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    AMA Style

    Tom Mboya Otieno. A Linguistic Stylistic Analysis of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Int J Lang Linguist. 2020;8(5):205-215. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20200805.13

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijll.20200805.13,
      author = {Tom Mboya Otieno},
      title = {A Linguistic Stylistic Analysis of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House},
      journal = {International Journal of Language and Linguistics},
      volume = {8},
      number = {5},
      pages = {205-215},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijll.20200805.13},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20200805.13},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijll.20200805.13},
      abstract = {Literary texts have largely been analysed from the perspective of literary criticism, literary stylistics. This paper is a linguistic stylistic analysis of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House. The principal aim of the paper of the paper is to identify and analyse linguistic features used in the play. For a systematic analysis, these linguistic features are clustered into phonological, graphological, lexical, grammatical and semantic levels of analysis. A Doll’s House is a play that explores family relationships, friendship and patriarchy among other thematic concerns. Helmer Torvald, one of the main characters, is the embodiment of hegemonic masculinity in the play. The study adopted a desktop research; the researcher read the text and identified linguistic features which he intuitively felt to be stylistically foregrounded. The results show that the author has effectively used linguistic features to develop the themes and characters of the play. The study concludes that stylistics provides the linguistic toolkit instrumental not only for the analysis and understanding of a given text, but also for the performance of the acted forms of art like a play (drama). Linguistic stylistics is a tool that can be used to analyse any form of text.},
     year = {2020}
    }
    

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    AB  - Literary texts have largely been analysed from the perspective of literary criticism, literary stylistics. This paper is a linguistic stylistic analysis of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House. The principal aim of the paper of the paper is to identify and analyse linguistic features used in the play. For a systematic analysis, these linguistic features are clustered into phonological, graphological, lexical, grammatical and semantic levels of analysis. A Doll’s House is a play that explores family relationships, friendship and patriarchy among other thematic concerns. Helmer Torvald, one of the main characters, is the embodiment of hegemonic masculinity in the play. The study adopted a desktop research; the researcher read the text and identified linguistic features which he intuitively felt to be stylistically foregrounded. The results show that the author has effectively used linguistic features to develop the themes and characters of the play. The study concludes that stylistics provides the linguistic toolkit instrumental not only for the analysis and understanding of a given text, but also for the performance of the acted forms of art like a play (drama). Linguistic stylistics is a tool that can be used to analyse any form of text.
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Author Information
  • Department of Languages and Literature Education, Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, Kakamega, Kenya

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