Stylistic Analysis as a Tool for Enhancing Critical Reading: Insights from Poetry and Fiction in the ESL/EFL Context

Abstract

This paper investigates how stylistic analysis of poetry and fiction can foster critical reading skills among learners in ESL/EFL contexts. Rather than focusing on classroom interventions, the study adopts a text-based approach, examining selected poems and fictional passages to illustrate how stylistic features such as metaphor, imagery, parallelism, deixis, and narrative perspective encourage deeper interpretative engagement. Drawing on stylistics as an interface between language and literature, the analysis demonstrates that close attention to linguistic patterns enhances awareness of how meaning is shaped, disrupted, or foregrounded in literary texts. By analyzing a poem by William Blake and an excerpt from Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, the study shows how stylistic techniques stimulate critical awareness of thematic complexity, ambiguity, and authorial choices. The findings suggest that stylistic analysis, when applied to diverse texts, equips learners with interpretive strategies that go beyond surface-level comprehension, ultimately contributing to critical reading competence in second-language literary studies.