This study aims to reveal semantic deviation as a tool of foregrounding in six poems by the American poet E. E. Cummings' (1894 – 1962) "as freedom is a breakfast food," "pity this busy monster, manunkind," "a salesman is an it that stinks Excuse," "of all the blessings which to man," "a man who had fallen among thieves," and "this(a up green hugestness who and climbs)." The study focuses on conceptual metaphoric realization and hyperbole as aspects of semantic deviation in the poems under analysis. The methodology adopts an eclectic approach to reveal the full import of the poet's messages underlying his semantic absurdities. The stylistic framework is based on Leech's description of semantic deviation in metaphor and hyperbole as an "honest deception" (1968, p. 166).The cognitive framework of the study adopts Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory as explicated in their book Metaphors we live by (1980). This theory is one of the theoretical frameworks developed within cognitive linguistics, which provided theoretical momentum to the relationship between language, mind and embodied experience (meaning is embodied). This theory means that metaphor is not merely a stylistic or decorative trait but that thought itself is embodied. The study also draws on Fauconnier and Turner's (2002) Conceptual Blending Theory with its related concepts of mental spaces and mappings. The analysis makes use of Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), especially with regards to transitivity in the poems under analysis. The study has reached two findings. First, a conceptual metaphor is not necessarily confined to those conventional metaphors we use in our daily contexts such as MORE IS UP; original or novel (foregrounded) metaphors such as those revealed by analysis of Cummings' poems can enter into daily use through different linguistic realizations for the same novel conceptual metaphor such as FREEDOM IS FOOD in his poem "as freedom is a breakfast food," because this novel conceptual metaphor is essentially embodied in the sense that we conceive a sense of tasting food so the underlying message will be that the human value of freedom is wasted by the tyrants who degrade it to the rank of consumption goods as just an item on the breakfast table. Second, with respect to hyperbole, the study reveals that Cummings prefers numerical hyperboles, for they bear important conceptual contents in terms of evoking mental spaces of infinity and transcendental unity. KEYWORDS: Cognitive Linguistics; Conceptual Metaphor Theory; E. E. Cummings; Foregrounding; Functional Linguistics; Hyperbole; Semantic Deviation; Stylistics
Hegazy, M. H. A. (2019). A Linguistic Analysis of Semantic Deviation
As a device of foregrounding in Selected Poems of E. E. Cummings: An Eclectic Approach. Annals of the Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University, 47(January-March (B)), 548-585. doi: 10.21608/aafu.2019.59013
MLA
Mahmoud Hussein Abdul-Rahman Hegazy. "A Linguistic Analysis of Semantic Deviation
As a device of foregrounding in Selected Poems of E. E. Cummings: An Eclectic Approach". Annals of the Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University, 47, January-March (B), 2019, 548-585. doi: 10.21608/aafu.2019.59013
HARVARD
Hegazy, M. H. A. (2019). 'A Linguistic Analysis of Semantic Deviation
As a device of foregrounding in Selected Poems of E. E. Cummings: An Eclectic Approach', Annals of the Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University, 47(January-March (B)), pp. 548-585. doi: 10.21608/aafu.2019.59013
VANCOUVER
Hegazy, M. H. A. A Linguistic Analysis of Semantic Deviation
As a device of foregrounding in Selected Poems of E. E. Cummings: An Eclectic Approach. Annals of the Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University, 2019; 47(January-March (B)): 548-585. doi: 10.21608/aafu.2019.59013
)
مشاهدة على SCiNiTO