Literature as a manifestation of language. Comparative analysis of the syntax of two tales

In the late eighties, as part of the research project "The Spanish language in Cuba", the study "Syntax of the educated norm of Cuba: the short story and newspaper article" was performed under the direction of Professor Luis Enrique Rodriguez. One of the objectives was to apply syntactic analysis to the linguo-stylistic characterization of more extensive texts. The final results of the investigation were never published, but the methodology developed is still used in postgraduate courses taught at the Faculty of Arts and Letters of the University of Havana. In the present article, the proposed methodology is applied to analyze two short stories and compare them. Our aim is not to make a detailed linguo-stylistic analysis, but to show how a method of syntactic analysis may be applied to a particular feature in the style of the stories: the technique of the stream of consciousness.