Peculiarities of Using Stylistic Means in American Artistic Discourse

Abstract

The article analyzes the use of stylistic means in contemporary American novels about the challenges of postmodern society, such as terrorist attacks, loneliness in digital reality, and digital technologies. Descriptive, continuous sampling, dictionary definitions, and contextual and component analysis methods were used to analyze the language material from novels by Douglas Coupland and Don DeLillo. The analyzed stylistic units were diverse and characterized by an emotional and evaluative component, with negative assessments being the most common. The units were divided into thematic groups, such as drugs, money, human behavior, and success/failure. The place and role of stylistic units in the novels were related to their content and stylistic features, with colloquial lexical items playing a significant role in creating a special atmosphere. The study also identified prospects for analyzing current trends in the development of English spoken language based on the works of contemporary American authors. The article concludes that excerpts from the analyzed novels can be used in the study of professional terminology and in seminars on the course "Features of literary translation" to help students compare online terminology and Internet jargon in English and Ukrainian. The Internet as an object of fiction and the use of these works of fiction in teaching English deserve further study.