A Pragma-stylistic Analysis of Two Poems by Wi’aam Mulla Salmaan

Abstract

The present paper offers a pragma-stylistic study to two selected poems that express the theme of “yearning to Iraq” composed by the contemporary Iraqi poetess in exile: Wi’aam Mulla Salmaan, which express her individual experiences and emotions of loss due to the forced severing of her living in her native homeland. This has been done by exploring the ways in which pragmatic theories of speech acts, metaphorical flouting of Grice's maxims, and deixis can be stylistically applied to decoding the performative messages conveyed in the selected poetic texts. A second aim has been to see whether or not the stylistic qualitative and quantitative densities of such pragmatic features (or their absence) serve to pinpoint certain identifiable individual stylistic markers in these two poems. Data analysis has revealed that those pragmatic theories offer a valid and functional basis for unravelling poetic themes, emotions, attitude, and values expressed in the data. In addition, the regularities and irregularities in their use of particular speech acts, metaphorical implicatures, and deixis serve as markers of their individual styles. Thus, it has been found that the poetess singular use of commissive speech acts only at the close of each one of her two poems is one marker of her poetic style. Another individual stylistic marker of hers in the data is the overwhelming use of metaphors and personifications in contrast with her scarce use of similes. Also, the poetess’s yearning to Iraq renders the densities of the deixis that spell out this poet-visa-vie-homeland juxtaposition particularly high. Data analysis has also shown that the expressive and assertive speech acts may be not mutually exclusive in one and the same utterance, and that one utterance can spell out more than one speech act.