A Stylistic Appraisal of Selected Poems in Sola Babatunde’s The Valley of Vision
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Date
2023
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International Journal of Literature, Language and Linguistics
Abstract
Creative writers, poets, novelists and playwrights
deploy linguistic forms that characterise literariness. More
specifically, the peculiarity of language use in the poetic genre
proves its suitability for stylistic appraisal. We analyse selected
poems in Sola Babatunde’s The Valley of Vision from a stylistic
point of view to examine how the sociocultural standpoint of the
poet is reflected in the poems. Six poems were selected purposively
from the poetic collection and analysed using the conceptual bases
of rhetoric and lexico-semantic variation. From the data analysis,
it was found that elements such as figures of speech, analogy,
transfer, idiom and loan words are employed in the text to unveil
the linguistic background of the poet, unveil the thematic
preoccupation of the poem, stir readers’ emotion and create
mental images in the minds of the readers. In conclusion, the use
of stylistics as the conceptual basis for the study has revealed the
reasons behind the choices made by the poet to attract readers’
attention by making his poems accessible. The use of the tools of
rhetoric and lexico-semantics has also revealed some facts about
African poetry to facilitate readers’ sense of interpretation.
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Keywords
Stylistics, African Poetry, Rhetoric, LexicoSemantics, Style Variation