STEP DELL’ANALISI DI UN TESTO

1. Considering the title. From the title we can draw expectations, conijectures, anticipations about the text.
2. Considering the layout. The lay out is how the poem looks on the page. The first curiosity that must arise to the reader is why the layout looks like this.
3. To be able to answer the question that arises when viewing the layout, you need to read the text
4. To read the poem, check up to all the word, this procedure is called denotative analysis
5. The connotative analyse it takes into consideration different level that all together contribute to make the message.

LEVELS: 

• phonocogical: analyses all the aspect connected to sound -> sound devices (repetition, refrain consonance, assonance)
• Semantic: analyses word choice (how the poet decide to use the word, semantic fell, verge tense, …)
• Syntax: word order, anaphor (back-word), cataphor (foreword), deviation from the normal (never I ever seen a…)

6)   Argumentative structure. For understending the contents about a poem, you have to    comprehend all words in the text.

THE WORD IS DEAD analysis 

Just considering the title the intelligent reader finds some curiosity that pushes him or there to make sense of the speakers point of view. Indeed, why do you say that the word might die? What’s the point of using the personification to  refer to a word.

The two questions are a sufficient reason to go on reading the text, but simply giving a look in the lay out you can easily realize the poem is arranged into two different parts still follow in the same pattern of two tercets that play a different function.

The reading experience allows the reader to find out the structure of the poem and helps to convey two different opinion about the nature and life of words.

The speaking voice seems to be taking distances from the opinion expressed by the “some say” of the first stanza and who underline that she puts the subject and the verb at the and of the stanza. Thus trowing the readers attention on the opinion of an unidentify group of people. Therefore such choice in word order highlights the speaking voices different opinion.

Such opinion becomes the most relevant message of the text. It goes without saying that the key position of the subject pronoun “l” in the second tercet gives a particular strength since it epitomises the meaning the speaking voice attributes to words.

The intelligent reader perceives the opposition not only as the simple espression of two different opinions on the contrary he or she is caught by the contrast death/ life of the poem. The idea of death is encoupsulatedin the very first tercet where both the use of the passive voice (“when it is said”) together with the riming couplet of the first two lines, highlight the concept. The alitterature quality of the third line helps the reader to stick the first opinion in his or her mind.

The intelligent reader understand that the first opinion communicates no identity since  indeed opinions is “some say”.

The speaking voice of  the  second tercet becomes therefore the stronger voice in the eventual opinion choice on the reader’s part. The use of the active form helps and adds to the point a further device to contribute to poetess’ message. Speaking allows communication and that is the reason why the speaking voice attributes so much importance to a word that becomes a living entity thanks to the use of personification which justified the idea a word can either live or die.

It should turn out a bit ridiculous that a poetess could accept the idea that words have no life.