Linguistic Features Of Emily Dickinson's Poems: A Stylistic Approach

Emily Dickinson is considered one of the most original poets in the history of American literature. As a recluse, she turned her back on the world, both in her life and in her poetry. Dickinson wrote in a time, when the form of a poem was strictly restrained; however, she defied the literary norms of her time, experimented with various poetic measures, and created a style of her own. While literary critics find the form and structure of Dickinson's poetry innovative, her irregular use of language also dampens the ardor of the general readers who are usually confused by such unconventional experiment. This research is, therefore, conducted to provide an approach to interpret her mysterious poems. A model of stylistic analysis is constructed to examine Dickinson's linguistic features at phonological, graphological, syntactic and semantic levels. Besides, one of the contextual factors - the tenor of discourse - is also explored to find out the various sources that have influenced and formed her style.The results of this study show that Dickinson rejects the iambic pentameter line, which has been the dominant poetic mode for hundreds of years; she is in favor of the hymn meter, which better suits the revolutionary nature of her expression. Like many other poets of her time, Dickinson uses the perfect rhyme to express a complete range of emotions, but more prominently, she adopts the slant rhyme to create a mysterious and disconcerting effect in her poems. Dash is almost Dickinson's exclusive mark of punctuation. In this study, the writer finds Dickinson's use of the dash capricious: they are used to produce multiple overtones, to bring an overall ambiance to a poem, to put emphasis on some specific words to create a sense of intensity, and to obscure the relationships between lines to disorient the readers and leave them in wonderment. Dickinson also tends to capitalize words to give them substantiality, which will draw personal associationsback to activate the words themselves. When it comes to the study of Dickinson's syntax, three primary patterns are found: the paratactic syntax, the elliptical pattern, and the sylleptic pattern. Like her other experiment with language, her unconventional syntax is an intentional construction bending the rules of grammar for stylistic effect. Dickinson also conveys her feelings through rich and effective rhetorical devices: symbolism is used to establish connections between images and ideas; personification gives an abstract idea human traits and qualities; pun is adopted to express divergent, even contradictory emotions; and sarcasm serves as a sign of her own defiance of literary as well as religious conventions.Dickinson was a deeply sensitive woman who questioned the puritanical background of her Calvinist family and soulfully explored her own spirituality, often in poignant, deeply personal poetry. She absorbed from a great variety of literary sources, such as Watts, Shakespeare, the Bible, Keats and Wordsworth; though she admired the works of the British Romanticist poets, she intentionally avoided the florid and romantic style of her time, creating poems of pure and concise imagery, at times witty and sardonic, often boldly frank and illuminating the keen insight she had into the human condition.Emily Dickinson's sophistication and profound intellect has been lauded by laymen and scholars alike and influenced many other authors and poets into the 21st Century. Although there has been much speculation and controversy over details of her life and poetry, it is undeniable that her style is distinct, innovative, effective and appropriate in her own work of mind.In brief, this study provides a new approach to Dickinson's poems, offering her readers a means whereby the irregularity in her poetry becomes interpretable. Teachers of American literature may also find the research method in this study helpful in classroom, when introducing this unique poet.