A Word Is Dead by Emily Dickinson
Title
Just considering the title the poem may be about words and their lifes. They are probably living entities because the speaking voice uses thr word "dead".
Layout
The layout shows the composition consistis of 6 lines arrange into similar patterns, two tercet that is stanzas of three lines each one, separated by a full stop. It follows that the reader would like to find out the reason of such structure.
Taking structure into consideration the reader has to reader to understand contend and later became aware of the functions of the two tercet in the economy of the poem.
The speaking voice reports common people's opinion about the life of a word once it's said. At the same time the speaker expresses his point-of-view on the matter discuss and asserts her strong opinion: Word strats living when it's said.
Structure
There is no doubt structure helps meaning in that the two stanzas contain two different prospects on the topic discuss.
Structure alone does not underline the personal conviction of the poetesse: the alternation of passive and active form of verbs had meaning.
"It is said" in the first a correspondence expression in " I say" in the second one. There is no need to underline how passivity and activity refer to opposite states of life and as a result the inteligent reader might well understand that meaning is the result of a contrast that manifest its strengt true struction, verb form and last but not least sintaxt and semantic choice.
Connotative analysis
Word order plays a relevant role in the comunicative function of the poem. Ended the choice of two strenght words following one other ads strenght to meaning and in particular brings strongly point of view of the poetesse about the words and their existances.
At the same time the phrase "I say" immediately recourse "some say" of the previous lines. This happens thans to the use of alliterative sound that pack words together. In addiction one cnnot but the mention the frequence occurance of sound "s" in the whole text. It is a way to create sound parallelism between words and creat cohesion between the two stanzas and of course between the two different point-of-view.
The life of words come to the fore grants in the semantic choices made by the poetess.
The percentual of words that mostly comes to mind and strikes the reader belongs to the semantic fills of time. People and words as well live and have their existence in time "When it is said", "just", "begins", "to live" and " that day" are all expression refering to time and the relationship people and words have with time. Interesting is to notes that all verb tences are in the simple present and aspect, meaning that the poetess's intention is to make readers feel and think taht what she is writing is always true.
There is also an infinitive taht is clearly connective with an a phrase that maybe consider a keyone (that day).