A Cognitive Stylistic Analysis on Stephen Leacock’ Short Story “My Financial Career”

Abstract

Cognitive Stylistics is a branch of linguistic stylistics that focuses on the study of how language and literature interact with human cognition and mental processes. This research presents a schema theory analysis of Stephen Leacock's short story "My Financial Career". This study aims to find out the steps in applying schema theory and to describe how schema theory enhances readers' understanding of the text. This research uses descriptive qualitative methods by using schema theory to convey messages and depict characters, situations, and emotions artistically. This study concludes that the schema theory applied to the short story "My Financial Career" can be done by applying the steps starting from selection, abstraction, interpretation, integration, and reconstruction. In conclusion, the schema theory contributes to improving readers' understanding of the short story "My Financial Career" indicated by respondents being able to retell it and having the same understanding.