Investigating the stylistic relevance of adjective and verb simile markers

Similes play an important role in literary texts not only as rhetorical devices and as figures of speech but also because of their evocative power, their aptness for description and the relative ease with which they can be combined with other figures of speech (Israel et al. 2004). Detecting all types of simile constructions in a particular text therefore seems crucial when analysing the style of an author. Few research studies however have been dedicated to the study of less prominent simile markers in fictional prose and their relevance for stylistic studies. The present paper studies the frequency of adjective and verb simile markers in a corpus of British and French novels in order to determine which ones are really informative and worth including in a stylistic analysis. Furthermore, are those adjectives and verb simile markers used differently in both languages?