Investigating the Syntactic Features in the Novel My Feudal Lord by Tehmina Durrani
Abstract
The study entitled “Investigating the Syntactic Features in the Novel My Feudal Lord” aims at describing syntactic devices used in the novel “My Feudal Lord”. This study was conducted using a textual analysis method. This research is based on a mixed research method as it involves qualitative collection of data and then the data is analyzed quantitatively to find out the dominant feature among all syntactic features. For this purpose, the researcher has used the software SPSS to perform descriptive statistics tests on syntactic features. The theoretical framework for this research is I.R. Galperin’s book “Stylistics”. Part five “Syntactical Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices” (Galperin, 1977) of this book is taken as a model for this research. For this purpose, the researcher has selected nine samples of 10 pages each from the pdf file of the book “My Feudal Lord” available on the internet. The novel “My Feudal Lord” used eight types of syntactic features i.e. inversion, parallelism, aposiopesis, ellipsis, repetition, asyndeton, polysyndeton, and rhetorical question. These features performed some major functions in the novel. The syntactical devices most frequently used by the writers of the novel “My Feudal Lord” is a parallelism with a mean value of 29.33 and inversion (13.22) and the least frequently used devices are asyndeton (0.78) and aposiopesis (0.33). By using parallelism, the novelist draws the reader’s attention to focus on the content of the novel.
Keywords: Stylistics, Syntax, Mixed Research