Linguistic Features and Foregrounding Aspects in Dylan Thomas’ “We Lying by Seasand”

A Stylistic Analysis

Authors

  • Rawand Sabah ahmad English Department, college of language, Soran university, Soran, Kurdistan Region, Iraq.
  • Esmael Mohamad fahmy English Department, college of language, Soran university, Soran, Kurdistan Region, Iraq.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26750/Vol(11).No(5).Paper36

Keywords:

Dylan Thomas, Deviations, Foregrounding, Repetitions, Stylistic Analysis.

Abstract

The main difficulty in understanding Thomas’ poetry is his diction and style, which the reader usually relies on to comprehend his poems. It would be difficult to go through character, activity, situation, or anything else unless the reader is able to grasp their sense. Thomas wrote many great poems. The selected poem is among these difficult and great poems. An obvious way to remove these obstacles is to depend on the use of linguistic features and the foregrounding theory of stylistics to explicate his poem. For this purpose, the present study is also supplemented by the checklist of Leech and Short (2007) to identify, describe, and evaluate the linguistic categories of the poem while making use of literary interpretations. As a result, the study is based on a qualitative descriptive analysis, which is used first to investigate the specific types of parallelism and deviations in the poem, then through describing and evaluating them the study shows how these prominent features help understanding and highlighting the themes and meaning behind the words. The study finds out that being able to identify and relate the prominent linguistic aspects supports the reader’s explications of this poem.  

References

Baldick, Ch. (2001). Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms. New York, USA: Oxford University Press Inc.Cirlot, J. (1962). A Dictionary of Symbols. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

Crystal, D. & Davy, D. (1969. Investigating English Style. London: Longman Group.

Enkvist, N. E. (1964). 'On Defining Style’. Spencer (ed.). Linguistics and Style.Pp; 1-56.

Ferber, M. (1999). A Dictionary of Literary Symbols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

Fowler, R. (1973). A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

Goodby, J. (Ed). (2014). The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The New Centenary Edition. London: Weidenefeld & Nicolson.

Goodby, J. (2017). Discovering Dylan Thomas: A Companion to the Collected Poems and Notebook Poems. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Hall, J. (1996). Illustrated Dictionary of Symbols in Eastern and Western Art. Colorado: Westview Press

Hrushovski, B (1980). The Meaning of Sound Patterns in Poetry: An Interaction Theory. Poetics Today, 2 (1a), 39-56.

Leech, G. (1969). A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. London: Longman.

-------------- & Short, M. (1981). Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. London: Longman.

Leech, G. & Short, M. (2007). Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. London and NY: Pearson and Longman.

Maud, R. (2003). Where Have the Old Words Got Me? Explication of Dylan Thomas’s Collected Poems. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Moody, H. (1984). Literary Appreciation: A Practical Guide to The Understanding and Enjoyment of Literature. London: Longman.

Nagaraju, C., Seshaiah, K. V. (2012). A study of Dylan Thomas’s poetry. IOSR Journal Of Humanities and Social Science, 6-10.

Paterson, I. (2003). Lexicon of the Language of Colour: A Dictionary of Colour. India: Replika PressI ARichards J. C., Schmidt, R. (2002). Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. London: Longman, 3rd ed.

Sabah, R. (2014). How White and Black Colors are Semantically Construed in Kurdish and English Cultures: a Comparative study. In vltal 2014 conference (Vol. 13, p. 302)

.………….(2016). Strategies of Translating Allusions from Kurdish to English and Vice Versa. BOOK OF PROCEEDING, 22.

Sandell, R. (1977). Linguistic Style and Persuasion. London: Academic Press.

Short, M. (1996). Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose. London & New York: Routledge.

Tindall, w. Y. (1962). A Reader's Guide to Dylan Thomas. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy

Verdonk, P. (1993). Twentieth-Century Poetry: From Text to Context. London and New York: Routledge. -----------------(2002). Stylistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Verdonk, P. (2002). Stylistics. Oxford: Oxford University press.

Wales, K. (2001). A Dictionary of Stylistic Studies in Language and Linguistics. London: Longman. …………. (2011). A Dictionary of Stylistics (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.

Wales, K. (2011). A Dictionary of Stylistics. New York: Routledge Taylors & Francis Group.

Widdowson, H. (1975). Stylistics and Teaching of Literature. Harlow: Longman.

Wilson, N., Taylor, N. (2015). The A to Z Guide Bible Signs and Symbols: Understanding Their Meaning and Significance. Michigan: Barton-Veerman Company.

Published

2024-10-29

How to Cite

Sabah ahmad, R., & Mohamad fahmy, E. (2024). Linguistic Features and Foregrounding Aspects in Dylan Thomas’ “We Lying by Seasand”: A Stylistic Analysis. Journal of University of Raparin, 11(5), 854–877. https://doi.org/10.26750/Vol(11).No(5).Paper36

Issue

Section

Humanities & Social Sciences