A Stylistic Analysis of The Catcher in the Rye

J. D. Salinger was a remarkable writer in contemporary America. The Catcher in the Rye is his only novel, published in 1951. This novel attracts much attention from the critics and readers worldwide. It becomes one of the representative works of American literature of the 20 th century.Stylistics is a cross-discipline, which combines linguistics and literature together. Literary stylistics tends to focus on the analysis of literary text. According to Leech, there are four categories of stylistic features: lexical,grammatical, figures of speech and context. Since the purpose of stylistic analysis is to highlight the stylistic effects, different categories are used to find out how choice of words involves various types of meaning. Though, many literary reviews have contributed to the understanding of The Catcher in the Rye, most of them are concerned with its theme and the social value. Few scholars study the novel from the perspective of literary stylistics. Therefore, this thesis attempts to analyze the stylistic features of the novel’s language, disclosing how the protagonist’s language expresses meaning and thought.