A Stylistic Analysis of The Cop and the Anthem 英语毕业论文.docVIP

A Stylistic Analysis of The Cop and the Anthem Abstract：The short story “The Cop and the Anthem” is the masterpiece of the famous of the famous short story writer O. Henry’s in the 20th –century. It embodies his writing styles in general. This paper tries to appreciate O. Henry’s humorous, ironical and comedic writing style from linguistic perspective. It will be elaborated in the following 5 aspects: lexical features, syntactic features, phonological features, graphological features and figures of speech to approach the tragic theme of the short story that the absurd society without humanity brings people spiritual agony. This approach further confirms that linguistic analysis can provide us with a new perspective to appreciate and evaluate literary works. Key words: Soapy, ironic effect, capitalist democracy, absurd, policeman, prison, I. Brief account of the author of the essay O. Henry (1862-1910) was a prolific American short-story writer, a master of surprise endings, who wrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. A twist of plot, which turns on an ironic or coincidental circumstance, is typical of O. Henrys stories. William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) was born in Greensboro, North Carolina. His father, Algernon Sidney Porter, was a physician. When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his paternal grandmother and aunt. William was an avid reader, but at the age of fifteen he left school, and then worked in a drug store and on a Texas ranch. He moved to Houston, where he had a number of jobs, including that of bank clerk. After moving to Austin, Texas, in 1882, he married. In 1884 he started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone. When the weekly failed, he joined the Houston Post as a reporter and columnist. In 1897 he was convicted of embezzling money, although there has been much debate over his actual guilt. In 1898 he entered a penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio. While in prison O. Henry started to write short stories to ea