Cohesion as a stylistic device in William Faulkner’s a rose for Emily

Abstract EN

The current paper is conducted to examine the cohesive markers used by William Faulkner in his short story "A Rose for Emily".

The study, thus, aims at showing the cohesive markers used in forming the text linkage, and since style is a choice, the study aims at stating to what extent cohesion, as a system, offers choices to text producer so as to create a stylistic effect.

The study seeks answer for the following research question: which cohesive device is densely used? It is hypothesized that grammatical cohesive ties are used more than lexical ones, and reference is vastly used.

To achieve the aims of the study, and verify or refute its hypotheses, Halliday and Hasan's model (1976) of cohesion is used for data analysis.

In the light of the obtained results of data analysis and discussion, the study brings forth the following conclusions: reference is used more than any other grammatical cohesive devices, as far as lexical relations are concerned, collocation is mostly used.

It also concludes that cohesion offers a variety of choices to the writer to choose among them so as to create a different style and these cohesive choices are made to form a stylistic effect, and thereby, the result is a pithy and impressive style.