On The Language Features In The Wind In The Willows

Kenneth Grahame is a Scottish writer. He gains his fame mostly for his novel which wasentitled The Wind in the Willows. Kenneth wrote The Wind in the Willows for his son. Thewhole book tells a story about four animals, who lived in the woods and near the riverbank.Through his adventure and with the help of his friends, Toad gradually changed his characterand at last recaptured the lost Toad Hall and lived happily with his friends forever. It showsthe animals’ life, their experiences and their friendship. From the story, the readers can seethese animals, especially Toad learned a lesson from life, and the readers can also fell theaesthetic mood in the fairytale. As one of the classic fairytales, The Wind in the Willows hasreceived wild popularity. It is not only because of the attractive plot. The captivating languagealso plays an important role. So the language features in The Wind in the Willows cannot beneglected. In this paper, stylistic analytical methods are adopted to analyze the languagefeatures. By analyzing the text from the phonetic, lexical, syntactical and rhetorical levels, wecan draw a conclusion that on the one hand, Kenneth Grahame followed the language featuresof the other fairytales. On the other hand, he also has his own language features. All theselanguage features add the literary charm to the works and make it an enduring classic works.This paper is made up of three parts: introduction, main body and conclusion.The first part is an introduction. The introduction consists of three sections: the firstsection is the introduction to the author and the content of The Wind in the Willows; thesecond section is the review of The Wind in the Willows at home and abroad; the third sectionis the introduction to the related theory stylistics.The second part is the main body of the paper. It includes three chapters. These threechapters are arranged according to the research method of stylistics. Chapter One is theanalysis of the fairytale on the phonetic and lexical level. On the phonetic level, the use ofrhyme, rhythm and onomatopoeia is introduced. On the lexical level, the words about colors,informal words and entities are analyzed. Chapter Two is on the syntactical level which canalso be further divided into the analysis of the length, the components, the form as well as thetone of sentences in The Wind in the Willows. Chapter Three is on the rhetorical level. In thischapter, the uses of some rhetorical devices such as simile, personification, parallelism as wellas contrast are introduced.The third part is conclusion. From the analysis of the language features in The Wind inthe Willows, the conclusion can be drawn that it can appeal so many readers not only becauseof the attracting plot but also because of the characteristic languages used in it.