FIGURATIVE LANGUAGES USED IN SHORT STORY ENTITLED “THE GIFT OF THE MAGI” WRITTEN BY O.HENRY

Figurative language is a language that contains or uses figures of speech. Figure of speech is a word that is not in the actual meaning of the word. Usually, figure of speech is used to give a beautiful impression to a sentence. As one of the interesting elements of literary work, figurative language is used by writers in order for the readers of literary works or short stories can be entertained and get the messages that the author wants to convey. There are nine types of figurative languages those are metaphor, simile, personification, synecdoche, metonymy, hyperbole, symbol, myth, and allusion. The object of this research used short story entitled “The Gift Of The Magi” written by O. Henry. This research has two research problems, those are: (1) Kinds of figurative languages are used in short story written by O. Henry (2) The most dominant figurative languages used in short story written by O. Henry. This research used qualitative research because results in the form of explanations of words that would be supported by the data presented in tabular form. The researcher found eight kinds of figurative languages used in short stories written by O. Henry. Those results are Metaphor (4), Hyperbole (7), Simile (5), Personification (0), Symbol (1), and Allusion (2). Based on the calculation it can be seen that Hyperbole is the most dominant figurative languages used in short stories written by O. Henry