A Stylistic Study of Vocative Particles in Selected English Literary Texts

Abstract

A vocative expression can be defined as an expression of direct address where the participant identity is set forth explicitly within a sentence. This study aims at showing how the vocative particles are used in literally texts, namely in the short story “The Garden Party" written by Kathryn Mansfield and identifying the forms of these vocative particles as used by the characters along with the functions of these vocative particles. For the analysis of vocative forms, the researcher used Quirk and Greenbaum (1973) model. Functionally, the data were analyzed based on Quirk et al. (1985) model. However, the results of this study shows that the characters in “The Garden Party” short story used various forms of vocative particles and for different functions. The analysis of the utterances demonstrated two main points, the first one is that the most used form of vocative particle by the characters is the form of single name with a title or even without it, the second one is that the characters tend to use the vocative particle mostly for the purpose of expressing the speaker's attitude towards the addressee.