Textuality » 3PLSC TextualityFDelFabbro - A word is dead
by 2019-02-25)
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A WORD IS DEAD TITLE: considering the title, the reader may expect the poem to deal with words and their life. They are probably living entities because the speaking voice uses the word “dead”. LAYOUT: The layout shows the composition consists of six lines arrenged into two similar patterns: that is two tercets that is stanzas ot three lines each, separated by a full stop. It follows that the reader wants to know / would like to find out / maybe intrested in / finding the reason of such structure.
STRUCTURE: Taking strucutre into a court the reader has to read the text to find out / to understand content and later become aware of the function of the two tercets in the economy of the poem. DENOTATIVE ANALYSIS: The speaking voice reports common people’s opinion about the life of a word once it is said / once said. At the same time the speaker expresses / convais the idea first stanza gives the idea / comunicates her point of view on the mater discuss / matterand asserts her strong opinion: words start living when said. It goes without saying / there is no doubt structure helps meaning in that two stanzascontain two different perspective on the topic discussed. CONNOTATIVE ANALYSIS: structure alone does not underline the personal convinction of the poetess: the alternation of passive and active form of verbs add to meaning. “It is said” in the first tercet finds it correspondet expression in “I say” in the second one. There is no need to highlight how passivity and activity refear to opposite states of life and as a result the intelligent reader may well understand that meaning is the result of a contrast that manifests its strenghts trough structure, verb form and last but not least sin and semantic choices. SINTAX: word order plays a relevant role in the comunicative function of the poem. In deed the choice of two stress word following one another adds strenghts to meaning and in particular brings strongly to surface the poetess’ idea about words and their existance. At the same time the phrase“I say” immediately recalls “Some say” of the previous line. This happens thanks to the use of alliterative sounds that pack words together. In addition, one cannot but mention the frequent recorence of sound “s” in the whole text. It’s a way to create sound parallelism between words and create coesion between the two stanzas and of course between the two different point-of-view. The life of words is loomes to the forefrontin the semantic choice made the poetess. The percentage of words that mostly comes to mind and strikes the reader belongs to the semantic feel of time. People and words as well live and have their existence in time. “When it’s said”, “just”, “begins”, “to live” and “that day” are all expressions refearing to time and the relationship people and words have with time. Interesting is to notice that all verb tences are in the simple present and aspect meaning that the poetess’ intenction is to make readers feel and think that what she is writing is always true. There i salso an infinitive that is clearly connected with an expression that may be considered a key-one (that day). Life extends in time. |