CHAPTER TWO: THE USE OF DEVIATIONS

2.1. Preliminaries

The chapter has furnished the theoretical understanding of deviation by

examining the views of different scholars. Apart from western ideas on
deviation, eastern ideas especially concepts in Indian poetics have been
evaluated to mark the juxtaposition between them. The chapter has
introduced the core concepts of deviations like morphological deviations,
syntactic deviations, syntactic deviations, grammatical deviations,
phonological deviations, thematic deviations, historical deviations and
dialectal deviations.

2.2. The Importance of Deviations in Poetry

Deviation, as Mukarovsky characterizes, is an aesthetically purposeful

distortion of standard language. Deviation is the energy at the back of
foregrounding of all sorts. All great poetry is a product of one or other kind
of deviation. In a liberal view of stylistics every utterance, sentence or
expression, however simple or brief it may be, is a product of style resulting
from deviation. Understanding of deviation increases the literal and the
literary awareness of the reader. Prague school of poetry propounded the idea
that poetry is bound to violate the norms of everyday language. Norms
themselves are relative for an example a sentence, like ‗He never says
nothing.‘ is an error if evaluated against the rules of Standard English, but
when treated as a usage, it is simply a dialectal feature. Stylisticians like
Levin distinguished between internal and external deviations. External
deviations are observed against the norms outside the text and internal
deviations are observed against the norms inside the text, as every text is
believed to develop its own norms. Deviation is closely associated with
50
poetic language. One reason is that in case of poetic language the tolerance
of the unusual by the reader, whether phonological, grammatical, lexical or
semantic, is very high. Deviations always challenge our predictability,
mathematics and statistics. There upon resulting in and establishing higher
relations, which otherwise may have remained unnoticed. Wales (2001: 103)
observes as follows:

―Strictly, deviation refers to divergence in frequency from a Norm, or

statistical average. Such divergence may depend on: (a) the breaking
of normal rules of linguistic structure (whether phonological,
grammatical, lexical or semantic) and so be statistically unusual in
the sense of over frequent‖.(1)

Language existed earlier to grammar. Grammar is originated from the

frequency itself. Grammarians themselves did not form norms. They simply
deduced the rules or the norms by observing the data of that language e.g.
one of the norms of third person singular subject of a sentence is that, ‗s or
es‘ should be added to the main verb. It can safely be said that this norm is
formed by observing the frequency of such occurrence in the native speech.
It is such departure from the established norms that enables the poet to
express something which otherwise would have been impossible. Indian
scholar Seturaman goes a step ahead and adds that to what we call deviation
is a kind of grammar of the poet himself. A Poet‘s grammar may be
anomalous on the surface level of the language but in fact, it has a deep
correlation with the established grammar and helps the poet to express more
effectively than the established norms. Seturaman (1995: 236) observes as
follows:

―Poets tend to have their own grammar and resort to deviation

whenever they have to express a meaning which the normal language
cannot‖. (2)

51
An interpretation of a literary work in general and of poetry in particular has
always remained a matter of dispute among the literary scholars of different
critical insights. On the contrary, H.G. Widdowson (1975: 37) believes as
follows:

―though it is common to find violations of linguistic rules in

literature, it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a
discourse to be literary that it should be deviant as text‖.(3)

He proves by giving the example of analysis of Robert Frost‘s ‗Dust of

snow.‘ The poem consists of a single sentence, which does not violate the
rules of English grammar. There is no deviation of any kind yet the lexical
items do take on a unique value in association with each other and with their
signification in the code.

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

of a day I had rued.

This single sentence poem does not have any deviated expression. Simply
association between ‗crow‘, ‗hemlock‘ and ‗dust‘, as the terms are related
with death, yields the interpretation that the crow represents a black frocked
priest scattering dust on a coffin. However, from this example it comes true
52
that if not deviation, the study of linguistics does transfer a unique value to
the lexical items of poems. Chomsky in Generative Grammar made famous a
pair of terms; surface structure and deep structure. It is believed deep
underlying structure generates the surface forms by means of
transformational rules of grammar. The phonological representations simply
show the surface but at the deeper level, the structure may be different. Now
the same idea can be further stretched to the thematic level also. The surface
theme of a poem may lead to some deeper theme. Fowler pointed out the
same idea. Wales‘ (2001: 378) informs as follows:

―Chomsky‘s views of paraphrase align him with the DUALIST stance

on STYLE: namely, that it is possible to say ‗ the same thing in
different words‖. (4)

The single sentence of the poem ‗Dust of Snow‘ has a surface theme and the
interpretation arrived at by Widdowson is a deeper theme. It is also possible
to validate the truth of the interpretation by one more way. Chomsky
believed that there could be more than one deeper structure that leads to
ambiguity. Therefore, the language of the poem perceived by readers is a
surface structure and the interpretations reached by them are deeper
structures. Scholars perceive different hidden ideas in the expression. Those
hidden ideas perceived by different scholars from the same expression could
be taken as different deeper structures of the same surface expression. Wales
(2001: 378) observes as follows:

―there is sometime a discrepancy between deep and surface

structures: a sentence may have two different deep structures, and so
give rise to ambiguity in its surface structure‖ .(5)

To make it simple, the single sentence of the poem ‗Dust of Snow‘ can be
interpreted yet differently than what Widdowson made. The crow represents
an advocate, and not priest, in a black dress making his client alert as hinted
in the expression ‗And saved some part of a day I had rued.‘ and thus saving
53
some days of his life probably curtailing the punishment. Thus if a poem
leads to two or more interpretations, then it can safely be said that there are
more than one deeper structure. It is only that different interpreters reach to
different interpretations, as their world of experience is different. Such
expression can be considered as deviation due to its suggestive quality.
Indian aesthetician Anadhavardhana calls it ‗dhvani‘. John Lyons (2001:
403-404) throws light on it as follows:

―It is not essential to the notion of transformational ambiguity that

there should, in all instances, be non-ambiguous transforms of the
same underlying structures. The transformational explication of
ambiguity would of course lose much of its force If it is turned out to
be the case that, in a significantly large number of sentences, what the
grammatical rules define to be differences in the deep structure of
sentences could not be co-related with different interpretations in
terms of semantically non-equivalent and non-ambiguous transforms
of the several underlying structures. But transformational grammar,
as such, does not stand or fall according to its capacity to handle
ambiguity or the semantic structure of sentences in general.

What just has been said is in conflict with one of the fundamental
principles that has inspired much of the recent work in generative
grammar: the principle that a sentence has exactly as many distinct
interpretations as it has deep structure analyses‖.(6)

Samuel Levin (1962) distinguished between two aspects of interpretation i.e.

clarification of meaning and establishment of truth. He believed that the text
of a poem is surface structure and deep structure of the poem is the hidden
meaning. The interpretations arrived at through the analysis of violation of
literary norms or through any other way always lead to clarification and after
that to establishment of truth. The analysis of violations of linguistic norms

54
simply satisfies the intellectual quest of intellectual minds and supports the
clarification.

Apart from this western view, eastern philosophers, especially Indian talent
contributed a lot. Classical Sanskrit scholars divided literature into three
different kinds gadya (prose), padya (poetry) and misra (mixed). The
difference is based on the facts of deviated use of language and what was
mere news (varta). Sanskrit scholar Bhamaha and Vamana believed alamkara
or embellishment are necessary for creating colorful style. Vakrokti
(deviance) is the striking manner of putting together charming words, in
charming fashion for charming ideas. Deviation of expression is the mark of
poetry. Dandin, a contemporary of Bhama in his Kavyadarsa says that
Svabhavokti and Vakrokti add beauty to poetry. Svabhavokti is a natural
description and Vakrokti is a deviant expression. In 9 th century
Anadavardhana of Kashmir wrote a commentary called Dhvanyaloka. He
declared that the soul of poetry is not style or sentiment but dhavni
(suggestion). He believed that expressed sense and suggested sense co-exist.
He used a pot lamp metaphor. The pot can be seen after the lamp is lighted.
Expressed sense lights the suggested sense. In 10-11 century, Kuntaka in his
Vakroktijivita defined Vakrokti. Vakrokti is the meaning, which is
discovered indirectly. Poets employ different deviations to achieve Vakrokti.

2.3. Types of Deviations

Geoffrey Leech claims that there are nine kinds of deviation found in poetry.
They are lexical, semantic, phonological, morphological, syntactic,
graphological, dialectal, grammatical, historical deviations.

Lexical deviation is in fact invention of new words, popularly known as

neologism. If words are produced for single occasion, they are placed under
nonce-formations for example T.S. Eliot uses ‗foresuffer‘ in his ‗Wasteland‘.
Thus applies the existing rule with greater generality. The prefix ‗fore‘

55
means beforehand as in the words like foresee, foretell. ‗foresuffer‘ means
‗suffer in advance‘. Poets violate the use of classes. Words belonging to one
category are used as if they belong to other category.

Grammatical deviation involves violations of norms of grammar.Violations

of surface structure involve the use of incorrect sentences and use of
incorrect word order of sentences.

Phonological deviation involves conventional poetic licenses like elision,

aphesis, apocope etc. Some poets, place primary stress at wrong places for
example. Browning placed the stress unusually as in [basta rd]. Aphesis is
the omission of an initial part of a word or phrase as in ‗tis for ‗it is‘,
syncope is the omission of a middle part as in n‘er for ‗never‘ and Apocope
is the omission of a final part as in oft for ‗often‘ where readers are expected
to pronounce it in different fashion. Poets sometime wish to lengthen the
length of a particular vowel than its usual limit. They do so by doubling
some letters like ‗o‘ or ‗r‘ etc. This helps the poet to bring to the notice of the
reader the mother tongue influence or the change of dialect.

Graphological deviation represents the violations of regular lineation.

Typographical lines and stanza in poetry are independent of standard units of
punctuation. This arrangement has a special communicative force. Poets like
E. E. Cummings, George Herbert and William Carlos Williams fully
exploited orthographic deviations like discarding of capital letters,
punctuation, eccentric use of parentheses, spacing etc. In John Hollander‘s
‗Swan and Shadow‘, the typographical shape of the lines of the poem renders
the visual identification of the theme. The shape of the poem stands for what
it says.

Semantic deviation is an irrational element that forces the reader to search

the meaning beyond the dictionary meaning. Semantically child cannot
become the father of its father. However, this superficial oddity forces the
reader to understand father in another sense.
56
Dialectal deviation is a deliberate departure from the use of ‗Standard
English‘. Poets many times plan to depict the life of one particular section of
English speaking society to present the first hand experience by mixing two
or more registers.English poets many time use words from Latin, Italian, and
French or Spanish languages. Nonnative poets employ words from their
mother tongues. This enables them to colour their poems with their own
culture and traditions.

Historical deviation means the use of language other than his contemporary
language. It is a kind of archaism that is the survival of the language of the
past into the language of present. The words used in English poems from
Latin and Sanskrit enables the poet to bring back the past into the present.
The emphasis is laid on the fact that the progression of language is cyclic;
language cannot be evaluated as standard based on past and present.
Anachronism is a historical deviation in which characters and events are
paced in the age other than their own. The deliberate anachronism is for
revival and historical coloring of the past.

2.3.1. Lexical Deviations

Wallace Stevens in his ‗The Emperor of Ice-cream‘ presents a contrast

between life and death in the two pictures drawn from the two stanzas. This
juxtaposition is obvious because the last two lines of each stanza are almost
the same. However, there is some kind of difference between them. In fact,
all sentences of the poem are imperative sentences. The readers are not only
supposed to be the eyewitnesses of both scenes depicted in two stanzas but
also to be active participants in the action of the poem. The concluding lines
of each stanza are very significant.

1. Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of Ice-cream.

57
 2. Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of Ice-cream.

‗Let‘ is a transitive verb and selects someone or something as its object.

Structurally and semantically, the sentence ‗Let the lamp affix its beam.‘ is
correct, but it is not so with ‗Let be be finale of seem.‘ Here, verbs ‗be‘ and
‗seem‘ are used as nouns. The verb ‗be‘ shows existence of life and life is
something, which always keeps on moving. Moreover, verb shows action
and noun usually shows an object or an idea. Noun usually shows an object
or an idea which does not move. Thus, the poet places the quality of moving
and the quality of nonmoving side by side for a typical poetic effect. The
verb ‗seem‘ shows ‗appearance‘ but since it is finale of seem, and finale can
only be of an event and the event can only be of reality, it leaves a gap of
meaning for readers to interpret that life, at the same time, is real and unreal .
Due to this deviation of class from verb to noun, the sentence is
foregrounded. Ice-cream is such object. It is real as well as illusory. It is
solid as well as liquid. Neither life nor death but change between them is a
matter of importance. This element of truth is contained in the deviated use
of ‗be‘ and ‗seem‘.

In John Donne‘s ‗The Sunne Rising‘, apart from adding ‗e‘ and doubling the
letter ‗n‘ in case of words like ‗goe‘, ‗pedantique‘, ‗thinke‘, ‗winke‘, ‗myne‘,
‗mee‘, ‗sunne‘ etc., the poet also curtails the word in unique manner.

Sawcy Pedantique wretch, goe chide

Late schoole boyes, and sowre prentices

Curtailing is process of word formation in which words are formed by

deleting letters from front or back side for an example in the formation of
‗lab.‘ from laboratory letters are eliminated from back side. In case of ‗flu‘

58
from influenza letters from both sides are eliminated. Similarly Donne, in
forming ‗prentices‘ from apprentices, eliminated letters from back side so
that it not only matches with the colloquial rhythm of the poem but also
underrates the people who do not know the value of their love.

William Wordsworth‘s ‗The Solitary Reaper‘ is a suggestive poem. Most of

the suggestions of the poem come from the deviated use of language as seen
in the following lines.

I saw her singing at her work,

And o‘er the sickle bending;

The phrase ‗sickle bending‘ is deviant in the sense that the noun ‗bending‘
could be moderated normally by ‗round‘ or ‗half round‘, but the use of
‗sickle‘ as an adjective is abnormal. It does not only correspond to the
activity but also brings home the correlation between the song and the
activity. It is foregrounded so invites attention of the readers to ponder over
and interpret. ‗Singing‘ and ‗bending‘ with similar sounds still enlarge the
scope of interpretation. Moreover, ‗singing‘ and ‗bending‘ are the objects of
the verb ‗saw‘. Thus, the objects of the verb are offered the equivalence. This
equivalence further reinforces the idea that ‗singing‘ that is her song is too of
‗bending‘ that is her helplessness against the fortune. The deviant use of the
word ‗sickle‘ shows that like lonely sickle, she has no other option in her life
but to reap the future as it comes to her.

2.3.2. Semantic Deviations

Understanding the information of an expression is one-step and

understanding the meaning is another. The meaning turns out as knowledge
when one brings the meaning into practice. The French philosopher,
Voltaire, explored the meaning of ‗Perhaps‘ as follows.
59
 If a diplomat says ‗yes‘

He means ‗perhaps‘

If a diplomat says ‗perhaps‘

He means ‗no‘

If a diplomat says ‗no‘ he is not diplomat at all.

If a lady says ‗no‘

She means ‗perhaps‘

If a lady says ‗perhaps‘

She means ‗yes‘

If a lady says ‗yes‘

She is not a lady at all.

From this, it follows that meaning of the word ‗perhaps‘ cannot be

determined, it keeps on changing depending on who is the speaker? And
what is the context? So is the case with other words. Words do not have
fixed meanings. Speaker, context and other socio-cultural factors determine
the meaning of the words.

William Shakespeare in his ‗Poor Soul, the Centre of my Sinful Earth‘, states
paradoxically how death shall die.

So shall thou feed on Death that feeds on men,

And Death once dead there‘s no more dying then.‘

60
Cambridge Advanced Learner‘s Dictionary gives the meaning of the phrasal
verb ‗feed on‘ as ‗use something to succeed.‘ The first line is semantically
deviant in the sense; neither soul nor death can feed on death and men
respectively. Soul and death are animated. It is curious to note that if you
consume something, it not only ceases to exist but also gets transformed into
an inseparable part of that organism.This analysis enables the readers to
interpret the fact if death consumes men, men become a part of death and if
soul consumes death, death becomes a part of soul and then how can there be
death anymore. Readers can interpret the word ‗success‘ in its related sense:
achieving of desired results every time. If the soul survives beyond the
earthly existence by uniting with the immortal, it will be a kind of success.
Thus in that sense soul can feed on death. Thus, once united with the
immortal, the soul shall have not to die again as it may not take birth again.

John Milton in his ‗The Invocation‘ uses the term ‗mortal taste‘ to show the
taste that brought mortality on the earth. ‗Taste‘ normally can take the
adjectives like bitter, bland, pleasant, strong, different, expensive etc. The
word ‗taste‘ as noun has three senses flavor, experience, and judgment.
Milton deviates in the use of phrase ‗mortal taste.‘ So semantically, the
phrase is not an acceptable collocation. Collocation is a frequently used term
developed by Firth (1957) and Halliday (1960) for referring the habitual or
expected co-occurrence of words. It is a kind of lexical behavior of language.
Wales (2001: 68) supports this view by commenting as follows:

―It might be argued that lexical (in) congruity is dependent on

semantic (in) compatibility.(7)

However, poetic effect more often depends on the exploitation of the

combinations. According to Ferdinand de Saussure, there are two
relationships which are held between the units of language system. Lyons
(2001: 240) summarizes it as follows:

61
 ―These relationships are of two kinds: paradigmatic and syntagmatic.
The syntagmatic relations, which a unit contracts are those which it
contrasts by virtue of its combination (in a syntagm or construction)
with other units of the same level. For example, the lexeme ‗old‘ is
syntagmatically related with the definite expression ‗the old man‘‖. (8)

Thus, syntagmatic relation between words explain the grammatical relation

existed between words that is which kind of grammatical category word
could occur at a given place whereas Lyons (2001: 240) describes
paradigmatic relations in the following manner:

―the paradigmatic relations contracted by units are those which hold

between a particular unit in a given syntagm and other units which
are substitutable for it in the syntagm. For example, ‗old‘ is
paradigmatically related with ‗young‘ and ‗tall‘ etc. in expressions
like the old man, the young man, the tall man etc‖. (9)

Thus, paradigmatic relations explain which word could be substituted at the

place of a particular word in the given expression. John Lyons distinguishes
between lexicon and base form. The base from is such from which all other
forms of the lexeme can be derived by adding morphemes. Each such
developed word can be called as lexicon. Whereas a lexeme describes the
central meaning, which remains common through all its inflectional forms.

To apply these linguistic terms to the expression ‗ mortal taste‘, it becomes

vital to see what are the possibilities to describe it in terms of linguistic
terms. ‗mortal taste‘ is linguistically incongruous and semantically
incompatible. At least it appears so on the surface structure. The syntagmatic
relations between ‗mortal‘ and ‗taste‘ are without any flaw because ‗mortal‘
is an adjective and ‗taste‘ is a noun, however paradigmatic relations are not
perfect because ‗mortal‘ could be substituted by any other word like, ‗sweet‘,
‗bitter‘ etc. which is semantically compatible with ‗taste‘. So again, as far as
surface structure is concerned, ‗mortal taste‘ appears to be anomalous
62
construction. It is also not possible to form any other word from ‗mortal‘ by
making morphological changes as to make it semantically compatible with
‗taste‘. The only approach left for interpretation of the phrase is by splitting
the words into sense components. In recent years, many semanticists and
linguists have been attracted by componential analysis of sense. Over all
meaning of a lexeme is composed of different sense components. These
sense components are recognized differently by different linguists, as
semantic features, semantic properties or sememe. Lyons (2001: 317)
acknowledges it as follows:

―This approach to the description of the meaning of words and

phrases rests upon the thesis that the sense of every lexeme can be
analyzed in terms of a set of more general sense components (or
semantic features), some or all of which will be common to several
different lexeme in the vocabulary‖. (10)

These linguistic findings help us to put focus on the fact that in the use
‗whose mortal taste‘, Milton deviates from normal collocation, and the
phrase is not acceptable collocation. Yet in poetic discourse, often poet
exploits the unusual combinations for poetic effect. We can attempt the
analysis of two words: mortal, taste as follows

mortal taste

[+human] [+human]

[+abstract] [-abstract]

[+short lived] [+short lived]

[+animate] [+animate]

63
Thus most of the sense components match with each other and let reader
interpret that as any kind of taste does not last long like that mortality too
does not last long. When somebody takes a sweet taste, the sweetness does
not last long. Similarly, mortality too does not last long. Jeffries (2010: 58)
admits that poets many times exploit sense relations that hold between
words. He observes as follows:

―All of the sense relations that can hold between words in the
language can be exploited in interesting ways by poetic language. The
sense relations that may occur between different words include lexical
field membership, oppositeness, homonymy, polysemy, hyponymy and
Selectional restrictions on co-occurrence and connotation. Apart from
being typical text in having a range of these features in the chosen
lexis, poems also have the capacity to highlight these features by
foregrounding them through deviation and parallelism‖ .(11)

The sense relation of lexical field is such in which the lexemes interrelate
and define each other in specific ways. Selectional restrictions show the
limits of the use of particular word for example the subject of the verb ‗read‘
can only be human being. Denotation is the core meaning that is a word in its
literal sense. Any additional meaning, we add according to our feeling is
connotation.

A word relation is a semantic phenomenon. While evaluating the sense

relations the analyst has to scrutinize the spellings and pronunciation. The
dictionary of etymology also serves a lot in understanding the sense relations
between the pair of words for example it is curious to know that the word
‗bank‘ meaning financial institution and the word ‗bank‘ meaning sides of
river, have identical spellings and pronunciation, do not have identical
origin. These sense relations shall help the reader to modify his insight to
understand the meaning of poems. All other sense relations can be easily
understood through the following chart.
64
SN SENSE SPELLINGS PRONUNCIATION MEANING EXAMPLE
RELATION

1 Synonymy × × nearly same obscure

complex

2 Antonymy × × nearly ascend

different
descend

3 Polysemy   relatedness foot(of body)

foot(of hill)

4 Homonymy   altogether date(time)

different date(fruit)

5 Homophony ×  altogether read

different red

6 Homography  × altogether read(present)

different read(past)

7 Hyponymy × × meaning rose

inclusion
flower

8 Metonymy × × close crown

association
king

 = similar

× = dissimilar

These findings help us to understand the semantic deviation in William

Blake‘s ‗London‘. William Blake exploited the possible interpretations in the
following lines of ‗London‘.
65
 I wander thro‘ each chartered street

Near where the chartered Thames does flow

Oxford Advanced Learners dictionary gives two entries for the word
‗chartered‘:

1. (of people who do particular jobs) having successful completed the

necessary training and examinations e.g. chartered accountant 2. rented for a
particular purpose e.g. a small chartered plane. Since the repeated use of
‗chartered‘ yields altogether different meaning, it is homonymous. It cannot
be treated as polysymous because it does not give the related meaning. Thus,
the word ‗chartered‘ which is used twice in Blake‘s ‗London‘ is a
homonymous enabling the readers to understand that the people living in the
streets are sophisticated people yet the river seems to have been rented for
different purposes. Normally it is difficult to accept the idea that street and
river are chartered. However, these expressions mark typical mindset of the
people. The expression ‗chartered street‘ denotes money mindedness of the
people living on the street even after having undergone sophistication,
training and education. The expression ‗chartered Thames‘ also corresponds
to business mindedness of the people of London.

The African poet, Chinua Achebe, presents a realistic picture of a refugee

mother and her child in Africa in his poem ‗Refugee Mother and Child‘. The
visual quality of the poem depicts the pathetic conditions of the refugee
camp. The poet does not describe the location probably for the reason that it
is a common phenomenon in Africa. The people in the poem seem to have
been displaced because of natural calamity like famine.

Most mothers there had long ceased

to care but not this one; she held

a ghost smile between her teeth

66
 and in her eyes the ghost of a mother‘s

pride as she combed the rust coloured

hair left on his skull.

The emotional appeal becomes still more poignant by the use of two phrases
‗a ghost smile‘ and ‗the ghost of mother‘s pride‘. With its unusual
collocation, the poet invites the reader to ponder on these phrases. One may
wonder that there can be a ghost of mother but how there can be a ghost of
pride. Cambridge Advanced Learner‘s Dictionary shows the list of words
that can go with smile: beaming, big, broad, wide, warm, wry etc. thus there
can be a broad smile, warm smile or faint smile but not ghost smile. Ghost is
the thin, often transparent image of a dead person. The ghost of somebody is
in fact his image of the past. That image of the past survives no more in the
present. This projects the meaning that ghost means unreal. More over smile
cannot be held in the teeth. This strengthens the interpretation that the smile
is unreal smile since the mother is sure about the end of her child otherwise
how a mother can smile at the dying child. Unlike teeth, it is possible for
eyes to hold pride, but the problem is how it can be ‗the ghost of mother‘s
pride‘. It is interesting to note, in case of the first phrase, the poet makes use
of the indefinite article ‗a‘ and for the next phrase definite article, ‗the‘ is
used. If evaluated the second phrase with the value ‗unreal‘, the definite
article opposes the value, since whatever is specific, cannot be unreal.

Therefore, we have to reconcile these opposing forces by interpreting the

second phrase. The pride of mother is her son, is specific but the pride is
‗ghost‘ in the sense that pride shall not remain long (as ghost) after the death
of her son. This portrayal of mother immediately brings before reader‘s eyes
a skull, even before the mention of ‗his skull‘ at the end of the stanza, the
skull of child in fact foretells one more skull that of his mother, due to the
close association between a skull and a ghost. Moreover, the repetition of

67
the word ‗ghost‘ gives the clue that the mother and the child are already
experiencing death in life. This adds to squalor and filth of the refugee camp.

W.B. Yeats in his poem ‗An Irish Airman foresees His death‘ presents the
monologue of an Irish airman and gives a perfect example of paradox in 3rd
& 4th lines of the poem.

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate,

Those that I guard I do not love;

The structural and the phonological similarity imply a sameness of meaning.

The pairs of verbs in the lines are direct antonyms: fight/guard, hate/love.
However, context neutralizes the opposition and forms equivalence. Usually
we hate those we fight and love those we guard, but the literal understanding
stands opposite to the literary understanding of the poem. The paradoxical
meaning determines the value suggested by the equivalence. Thus, it can be
observed that it is quite common to find deviant sentences in poetry, but
deviance of this kind is not a defining feature of poetry. The language of
poetry should be so designed that act of literary communication be created,
independent of a social context. The deviance shall express a reality other
than that is sanctioned by convention.

The title of P. B. Shelley‘s ‗Ode to the West Wind‘ is deviant. Shelley was
expelled from Oxford for publishing a tract; The Necessity of Atheism. In
fact, wind can blow from any direction to any direction. Since it is the West
Wind; blows from the west and probably goes to the east. Figuratively, wind
also conveys the meaning ‗thoughts‘. The use of definite article makes it
specific wind. Thus, it expresses the poet‘s urge to spread his message on the
entire earth. The poem shows his remarkable interest in meteorology. To the
68
question, how is the poem related to philosophy, freedom and other human
interest? One can safely interpret that almost every abstract and concrete
nouns are attributed with human and animate features like ‗the winged
seeds‘, ‗thine azure sister of the spring‘ and ‗the dying year‘ etc. These
details invite readers to interpret that the poet is not simply describing the
change in the season but is advocating the significance of change in the
human existence.

2.3.3. Phonological Deviations

English is a rhythmical language. In connected speech, every stressed

syllable happens to occur after regular interval of time. For matching the
distance of occurrence between two stressed syllables, pronunciation of
minor group of words (pronoun, articles, prepositions etc.) are reduced to
weaker forms.
Words Strong Forms Weak Forms
1.has / hxz/ /həz /, /hz/
2.an / xn/ /ə
3.me / mi:/ /mi/
4. we /wi:/ /wi/
5. be /bi:/ /bi/

John Donne presents the dramatic argument in his ‗The Sunne Rising‘ by
making use of easy colloquial speech. Moreover to emphasize and to use still
longer vowels to emphasize, the poet employs words such as mee, bee and
wee. He adds one more ‗e‘ after me, be and we not only to rhyme with other
words like yesterday, lay, alchemie etc. but also to lengthen the vowel /i:/
still longer to emphasize these words and to indicate the actual utterance of
them in the colloquial speech of the English people during his contemporary
time.

69
In Standard English, most of the minor groups of words are monosyllabic.
They are also called as closed category words as number of words in that
category cannot be increased, in other words modals cannot be increased by
any means. May, should etc. are monosyllabic words. John Milton in the first
line of his ‗The Invocation‘ employs the monosyllabic minor group of words
like ‗of‘, ‗and‘ and ‗the‘ along with monosyllabic major group of words like
‗man‘s‘, ‗first‘ and ‗fruit‘, but in the centre he introduces a multisyllabic
word having five syllables i.e. ‗disobedience‘. The line can be read as
follows:
Of man‘s first disobedience, and the fruit

As an effect the reader is invited to linger over the longer word more and
think about the first man made mistake, then think its comparison with other
monosyllabic words especially the last because fruit usually stands for
reward, here on the contrary to punishment.

‗An old woman‘ of Arun Kolatkar is a graphic portrait of a beggar woman.

The speaker in the poem becomes aware of the degraded conditions of the
woman at individual level and from there the degradation is extended to
societal or traditional level as symbolized by the cracks appearing on the
hills and the temples. Now this theme also comes true through phonological
deviation employed in the poem.

And as you look on,

the cracks that begin around her eyes
spread beyond her skin.

And the hills crack,

And the temples crack,
And the sky falls

70
Allomorph is the different phonetic realizations of the same morpheme. The
suffixes ‗s‘ and ‗es‘ are phonetically realized as /s/ after voiceless plosives
/p/, /t/ and /k/ as in word like caps / kxps/ and as /z/ after voiced plosives
/b/, /d/ and /g/ as in word like cards /ka:dz/ and as /iz/ after affricatives like
/d3/ as in word like judges / d3 ^ d3iz/. In the poem the poet uses the
following words having the suffixes ‗s‘ or ‗es‘: grabs, tags, wants, says,
hobbles, lightens, stands, hills, holes, eyes, and cracks. The list shows that
the phonetical variant /iz/ is not present but two phonetical variants /s/ and
/z/ are present in the list. The suffix ‗s‘ in the words ‗wants‘ and ‗cracks‘ is
pronounced as /s/ whereas for all remaining words it is pronounced as /z/.
This helps the readers to correlate the ideas of the old woman and, hills and
temples representing the society. Now still further it can be noticed that the
word ‗cracks‘ is applied with the old woman and its reduced form ‗crack‘ is
applied with the hills and the temples to reinforce the idea of degradation of
both of them. As it can be noticed suffix ‗s‘ and so allomorph /s/ goes with
‗hills‘ and ‗temples‘ as these words are pluralized. Thus marks the loneliness
of the old woman in sharp contrast with the plurality of hills and temples.

2.3.4. Morphological Deviations

‗Richard Cory‘ of E.A. Robinson is a psychological pen-portrait of an

individual who seems to have all the earthly qualities to make him the most
fortunate, the happiest man in the world. Nevertheless, in the end ‗Richard
Cory‘ leaves with a sense of shock and a bitter realization of the unhappy,
incomplete, insufficient and lonely individual. The poem also depicts the set
views about success and happiness in American society. This hollowness of
the concept of success bears the precursor in the title itself.

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

71
 He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

―Good morning,‖ and he glittered when he walked.

The name ‗Richard Cory‘ seems to have chosen because it foreshadows the
theme of hollowness of the concept of success and its illusive nature. The
word ‗Richard‘consists two elements 1. rich 2. ard. ‗Rich‘ means wealthy
and ‗ard‘ seems to be abbreviation of ardent meaning enthusiastic, and rather
fervent.

Thus, the first word has a bearing on the poem in that we find either the
person in the poem is enthusiastic to make a show of his richness or the
people on the pavement are overenthusiastic to form an opinion about his
richness. Now let‘s think about the word ‗Cory‘, the word bears close
resemblance with ‗core‘ meaning central part. Thus, it enables the reader to
conclude that Richard may not be rich if one goes to the core of the truth of
the plight of the person. One of the significant lines of the poem invites
reader‘s attention. The line is ‗and he glittered when he walked.‘ This line
occurs significantly at the centre of the poem as one more evidence to claim
that the line brings the contradiction between illusion and reality to the
forefront. The word glitter as we know is also used in a very famous proverb,
‗All that glitters is not gold.‘ Thus, it hints at the deceptive nature of the
person, thereafter of the success.

Katherine Mansfield‘s ‗The Man with the Wooden Leg‘ is a pen-portrait of

a man who had been in a war. Probably he lost his leg in the war. People in
72
the neighborhood used to feel sorry about him. However, when he used to be
in the crowd he did not remember about his wooden leg. Whenever he used
to be in his little house, the word ‗house‘ hints that he did not have home. He
had a little goldfinch bird in a green cage to sing loudly at home so that he
could not hear his physical and mental pain of his wooden leg. The poet then
gives his name as follows.

His name was Farkey Anderson

And he‘d been in a war to get his leg.

The name Farkey Anderson seems to be morphologically deviant. It so

seems that both the words are formed with separate free morphemes. The
word ‗Farkey‘ can be split as far + key and Anderson can be split as and +
her + son. These findings help to interpret that the poet wants to point out
that it is very difficult to understand this man. The key to his psyche is far, in
other words one may not understand him so easily. In addition, that he seems
to be the real son of his motherland that he openly does not express his grief.

Gordon Challis‘s ‗The Postman‘ presents morphological deviation to show

indifferent mentality of the postman who works as a distributor of different
messages to people.
This cargo of confessions, messages,
demands to pay, seems none of my concern;
you could say I‘m sort of go-between
for abstract agents trusting wheels will turn,
for censored voices stilled in space and time.

The poet seems to have coined a new term ‗go-between‘ in order to convey
exactly the disinterested nature of his job of distributing happiness in the
form of ‗demands of pay‘ and sorrows in the form of ‗confessions‘ and
‗messages‘.

73
2.3.5. Syntactical Deviations

Ezra Pound‘s ‗In a Station of the Metro‘ is syntactically deviant poem in the
sense that it is a verbless sentence. A sentence is constructed usually of five
elements S: Subject, V: Verb, O: Object, C: Complement and A: Adverbial.
Modern grammar believes that there should be at least two elements, namely
Subject + Verb, for a sentence to be acceptable and grammatical. Other
elements namely O, C and A are optional elements. It means that there
should be an action and there should be someone to perform the action. In an
imperative sentence, only V element suffices. However, the imagist poet
innovates verbless clause for his ‗In a Station of the Metro‘.The lines of the
poem reads as follows.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Paul Simpson (2011: 111) writes about this single line poem as follows:

―One important aspect of the grammar of this short couplet, which is

based loosely on the seventeenth syllable Japanese haiku poem, is
that it contains no verbs. With that go many contingent structures
such as finiteness, tense (and time reference) and propositional value
(which means that you cannot ‗argue‘ with the ideas expressed here).
From this, other aspects of clause structure collapse: a grammatical
Subject cannot be formed, nor can Complement elements be
positioned relative to a verb. What remains is pared down to its
stylistic ‗bare bones‘, so to speak, encoding a sequence of phrases to
do with things and their locations‖. (12)

Whereas, Widdowson (1975: 37-38) observes regarding the poem as

follows:
74
 ―Here the simple juxtaposition of the two phrases leads us to
associate the faces and the petals and the value of each of these
lexical items in the poem derives from association: the faces in the
crowd and the petals on the wet, black bough blend to create a unique
semantic image for which the language code has no term‖ .(13)

The imagist poet deletes the verb from the sentence. Major reasons can be
concluded as below:

1. The poet could have opted one verb of comparison from, the list:
appeared, looked, found, seen, etc. However, such option would have limited
the boundaries not only of the poet but also of the reader to carve the image.
In the verbless clause, one is free to imagine more.

2. The second interpretation is why should reader read the lines as lines of
comparison when comparative words ‗like‘, ‗as such‘ and ‗as‘ are absent in
the lines. Simply two phrases are placed side by side. There is every
possibility that it reads even like contrast. The word ‗apparition‘ has
semantic values [+ human], [+ horrible], [+ unreal]. These values are
compatible with the word ‗faces‘ but not with ‗petals‘. The semantic values
of petals are [- human], [+ beautiful], [+ real]. Since the word ‗apparition‘ is
directly related with faces, as both words come within the same clause, we
can safely assume that faces are unreal whereas ‗petals‘ are real.
Contradictory forces are present in the lines itself. Article ‗the‘ is commonly
used to show specific objects, so interestingly enough ‗the apparition‘ and
‗the crowd‘ are not fantasies but the specific references. The demonstratives
are such words, which point out particular things or objects. The word
‗these‘ is purely contextual word. One can ask ‗these‘ means which?
Therefore, the expression ‗these faces‘ refers to the real faces as seen by the
speaker at that moment and believed that reader is also present at that
moment. Thus, the first phrase uses all determinate objects whereas the
second uses indeterminate objects. Petals mean zero article + petals and ‗a
75
wet black bough‘ means indistinct bough. This linguistic analysis helps us to
interpret that whatever is real is unreal and whatever is unreal is real.

Canadian poet A.J.M. Smith wrote a thesis on W.B. Yeats with the title ‗The
Poetry of William Butler Yeats‘. It is a retrospective assessment of the
Yeats‘s ‗The Wanderings of Oisin‘. The opening line of Smith‘s poem ‗A
bitter king in anger to be gone‘ invites a biographical reading of Yeats. I.S.
MacLaren in his article ‗The Yeatsian Presence in A. J. M. Smith‘s ―Like an
Old, Proud King in a Parable‖‘ invites the interpretation of the poem based
on linguistic analysis. Usually we find possessive pronouns preceding
immediately before noun but in the poem, the poet deliberately delays the
occurrence of noun. As a result, this syntactical deviation serves the two
purposes. Firstly it enables the reader to read the line as ‗your difficult,
lonely music‘ and then secondly as ‗your difficult heart‘. It gives an occasion
to the reader to place two noun phrases side by side as follows:

Your difficult, lonely music; your difficult heart

It further widens the possibilities that music and heart on metaphorical level
stand for poetry. Whatever it may be, but the word ‗difficult‘ remains
common, suggesting the nature of Yeats poetry. It can be viewed in the
following lines of the poem.

And I will sing to the barren rock

Your difficult, lonely music, heart;

Like an old proud king in parable.

I.S. MacLaren (2012: 12) in his observation on this strange syntacs observes
as follows:

76
 ―The separation of the personal adjective ―your‖ from its noun,
―heart‖ leaves the reader the length of the line to imagine that the
difficult, lonely music belongs to the ―father‖ who is still being
addressed. The grammatical connection with ―heart‖ at the line‘s end
does not wholly negate the previously made association; in fact, the
spiritual bond formed in the poem would suggest that the distance
between the ―father‖ Yeats and Smith‘s ―heart‖ is not great. Further,
the spiritual tie instigated and confirmed by the generical nature of
―Parable‖ permits the last line to signify that the poet, Smith, will
sing his heart‘s song in the manner of the old, proud king, Yeats. In
the light of this reading, Smith‘s decision to introduce his last three
volumes with ―Like an Old, Proud King in Parable‖ becomes
significant: standing like an invocation at the head of Collected
Poems (1962), Poems New and Collected (1967) and The Classic
Shade (1978), it recognizes the inspiration and announces the
aspiration of his poetical identity‖. (14)

Poems sometime, all of a sudden change the pattern established by it. It

deviates from its own norm that is called as internal deviation. With this, the
poet draws reader to some significant part of the poem. The poet reverses his
plan to foreground some literary values. Poets use run-on line (also known as
enjambment), where a line of verse runs into the next line without any
grammatical break. End-stopped line of verse is such where grammatical
structure and sense ends within the line itself so if a poet employs run on line
and then suddenly introduces end-stopped line. The end-stopped line gets
foregrounded. Jeffries (2010: 51) observes as follows:

―In more recent times, the potential for this kind of tension between
end-stopped and run-on-lines has been exploited still further. Run-on-
lines are almost always foregrounded, even in free verse where the

77
 tension between line endings and syntax is vital to a text‘s identity as
poetry‖. (15)

The following lines from the poem ‗Time‘ of Allen Curnow; a New Zealand
poet, show variant use of syntactic pattern of lines:

Ex. No.1:

I am the nor‘ west nosing among the pines

I am the water-race and the rust on railway lines

I am the mileage recorded on the yellow signs.

Ex. No.2:

I, Time, am all these yet these exist

Among my mountainous fabrics like a mist,

So do they the measurable world resist.

Ex. No.3:

Am island, am sea, am father, farm, and friend;

Though I am here all things my coming attend;

I am, you have heard it, the Beginning and the End.

Allen Curnow composes here a monologue of an abstract speaker ‗Time‘.

The full poem consists 7 stanzas. Each stanza consists 3 lines. Each line of
the first four stanzas begins with the construction ‗I am‘, as can be seen here
in Ex. No.1 above. The next two stanzas i.e. stanza no.5 and 6, have a little
change in this regular pattern and instead of ‗I am‘ pattern now begin with
‗I‘ as can be seen here in Ex. No. 2 above. This syntactical pattern still
78
undergoes change in the last stanza no. 7 as can be seen here in Ex. No. 3
above. In fact, each stanza, except 6 and 7, is a long sentence and these are
the examples of end-stopped lines. However, the sentence that begins at the
first line of stanza no. 6 continues until the end of stanza no.7. The last line
of stanza no.6 is:

‗I, more than your conscious carrier‘,

and the first line of stanza no.7 is:

‗Am island, am sea, am father farm and friend:‘

This is an example of run-on-line. This is a deliberate deviation from the

previous regular stanzaic pattern of the poem. The poem follows a regular
pattern for the first four stanzas, makes a little change for the next two
stanzas, and still further employs striking changes in the last stanza. The
changes occur in the following fashion.

The Regular pattern followed in the first four stanzas

Slight change in the regular pattern employed in the next two stanzas

Striking change in the regular pattern used only in the last stanza

The poet takes his reader systematically to the striking changes. This
statistical analysis of syntactical patterns of the poem makes one to interpret
that Time is such commodity that it never remains the same all time but
always under the flux of change. However, time has a definite pattern of
change. In conclusion, time does change but systematically.

79
2.3.6. Graphological Deviations

‗To My First White Hairs‘ of Wole Soyinka is graphologically deviant

poem. He achieves the deviance by plenty of modes. As evident in the first
stanza, he goes on describing, the object namely, ‗My head sir!‘ with the
noun phrases marking black colour for example ‗Hirsute hell chimney-
spouts‘, ‗black thunders‘, ‗scour brush in bitumen‘ etc. and then names the
object. The poem consists of four stanzas having three lines each. Each
stanza has one dominant noun phrase. The dominant noun phrases have three
words each as in ‗My head sir‘, ‗watered milk weak‘, ‗THREE WHITE HAIRS‘
and ‗your sham veneration‘.

This three-word formula continues further. There are three sentences ending
with full stops. The word weave is also repeated three times. Significantly,
the use of apostrophe mark is made thrice. The second stanza marks white
colour as opposed to the black colour of the first stanza. The white colour
dominates the third stanza and in the fourth, the colours white and black are
merged with each other, this colour pattern typically hints at the human
history. It interprets the time that black and white races cannot stay estranged
from each other for a long time. Superiority of one shall turn ultimately into
merging of one with the other. In this history, the white has to play a very
significant role. The emergence of the white is inevitable. The poet expresses
this by capitalizing every letter in the phrase ‗THREE WHITE HAIRS!‘. This
phrase is centralized as it comes at the very centre of the poem. The phrase
stands out. It not only draws the attention of the readers but also invites them
for interpretation.

William Carlos Williams voiced the spirit of Imagism. ‗The Red

Wheelbarrow‘ is an imagist poem. The poet felt that he should employ such
form to express the life around him exactly and accurately in American

80
idiom. It is one of his seeing poems. While hinting at the graphological
deviation, Widdowson (2011: 148) says in this regard as follows:

―The normal perception of ordinary and unitary things like a

wheelbarrow or rainwater is disrupted (it might be suggested) and
realigned into an alternative pattern, and within this pattern,
contrasts coexist and are made coherent, if only for a moment‖. (16)

Syntactically, the poem is a single complex sentence. The sentence may be

transformed, if paraphrased, as ‗So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow,
which is glazed with rain water, beside the white chickens‘. The poet
typographically arranges the 16 word complex sentence having one main
clause and one subordinate clause in such a manner that it represents a visual
word pattern. It stands for what it says in other words the object, the red
wheelbarrow itself. The poem consists of four stanzas. Each stanza consists
of two lines. The first line consists of three words and the second line a
single word. Each stanza resembles like the red wheelbarrow itself. Shape
poem does not reflect any other meaning than what it topographically shows.
It is important therefore to avoid the temptation of relating the poem with
any other thing outside the text but within the text, the poem does have some
significance. Wheelbarrow is a small cart with one wheel. The first three
words in each stanza represent the cart and the fourth word, the single wheel.
Close reading of the poem confirms the idea that the fourth words are very
important words on which the semantic value of the poem rests and this
typical syntactic pattern projects a barrow in front of the eyes of readers.

These words in the last positions represent different worlds like barrow:
mechanical world, water: natural world, chickens: animated world, upon:
language world. In fact, so much depends upon their interrelations.

81
2.3.7. Grammatical Deviations

The title of Robert Graves‘s poem ‗Flying Crooked‘ is an interesting

collocation. ‗Flying Crooked‘ by Robert Graves can be studied simply by
grammatical analysis of the poem and without any reference to the outer
world. ‗Flying‘ in the title suggests incompleteness so ongoing activity.
Lexically collocation used in the title is unusual; ‗flying‘ has positive sense
whereas ‗crooked‘ has negative sense. The adjective /descriptive word seems
to have been transferred from its original place.

The butterfly, a cabbage-white,

(His honest idiocy of flight)

Will never now, it is too late,

Master the art of flying straight,

Yet has—who knows so well as I?

A just sense of how not to fly:

He lurches here and here by guess

And god and hope and hopelessness.

Even the aerobatic swift

Has not his flying-crooked gift.

The first sentence, with many breaks and parentheses, exemplifies the kind
of crookedness of the flight. The subject butterfly is estranged from the verb
‗master‘ by a noun phrase ‗a cabbage-white‘ and then by an incomplete
sentence in brackets ‗(His honest idiocy of flight)‘ and then again by a clause
‗it is too late‘. In the second part of the sentence the same disjointed
movement continues. Other lexical deviation is regarding lurching ‗here and

82
here‘ where ‗here and there‘ would be normal.While commenting on the
lexical sets Seturaman and others (1990: 68) comment as follows:

―The poem is also built around a contrast between two kinds of

lexical sets. On the one side, we have ―flying straight‖ which is
spoken of as an ―art‖ and has to be ―mastered‖. These refer
evidently to the movement of other birds. But the butterfly‘s
movement, ―flying- crooked‖, is a ―gift‖ (not an ―art‖), and the
butterfly ―has‖ it, he does not have to ―master‖ it. He ―has‖, too, a
just ―sense‖ (not an acquired ―skill‖). He moves by ―guess‖ which
accords with ―sense‖. That the second lexical set is placed higher is
shown not only by its greater proportion but by the triumphant ending
of the poem with the phrase ―flying-crooked gift‖.(17)

Now this linguistic analysis enables us to make the following interpretations.

The subject of the first sentence is separated from its verb just to show that
the performer and the performance may be at a distinct place from each other
but there is always a link between them, in other words, the poet is present
on every word of every line of the poem. Flying crooked marks the notion
that the poet‘s mind works in a non-normal, unconventional way in the
imaginative flight. Lurching ‗here and here‘ denotes meditation made on
some matter repeatedly until the poet satisfies himself at his poetic creation.
‗Idiocy‘ also hints at idiosyncrasy or individuality of the poet. The poet
shows that his inspiration is a mark not of reason but of guess, (that is inner
power) or of God (that is divinity) or of hope and hopelessness, (that is
juxtaposition of happiness and pain, life in short). Apart from that, the
following line entices certain biographical interpretations

‗Yet has—who knows so well as I?

A just sense of how not to fly:‘

83
These lines occur at the very center of the poem just to inculcate the notion
that ‗I‘ is at the very center of the poem. As far as the mode of narration of
the poem is concerned, the poem is in the third person narration but there is
an intrusion of the first person. There are two clauses 1.Yet has a just sense
of how not to fly, and 2.Who knows so well as I? The abstract subject in the
sentence no.1 is undoubtedly butterfly but in the sentence no.2, it is ‗I‘. The
use of dash (—) given before the word ‗who‘ may hint at the change of the
narrative mode. Then if we consider the line no.2 as a rhetorical question
then ‗I‘ stands for butterfly. Thus the interpretation is rendered that nobody
knows so well a just sense of how not to fly, as the butterfly knows. Line
no.2 can be treated as a Wh-question then ‗I‘ stands for no other person than
the man who penned the poem that is the poet himself because in that case
‗who‘ stands for the butterfly. Thus, the interpretation, the butterfly knows
so well a just sense of how not to fly as I (that is the poet) do.

Robert Browning‘s ‗My Last Duchess‘ is a dramatic monologue and, as

Robert Langbaum says, a typical product between sympathy and judgment of
reader. The Duke is stern egoist, who shows his portrait gallery to a
delegation of a count whose daughter is likely to get married with him. In an
attempt to expose the character of his last duchess, he exposes his own
character too. The deviant use of pronouns is very significant stylistic feature
for interpreting their personalities.

Fra Pandolf chanced to say ‗Her mantle laps

Over my lady‘s wrist too much, ‗or‘ ‗paint

Must never hope to reproduce the faint

Half-flush that dies along her throat.‘

-------------------------as if she ranked

My gift of a nine –hundred-years-old name

84
 with anybody‘s gift. Who‘d stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech- (which I have not) – to make

Your will Quite clear to such an one, and say,

‗Just this or that in you disgusts me.‘

It is very interesting to note that the title of the poem begins with ‗My‘ and
the poem ends with ‗me‘ and in between runs the whole drama. The use of
possessive pronoun is remarkable in the phrases like ‗my last Duchess‘, ‗My
favour‘, ‗My gift‘, ‗my lady‘, ‗her breast‘, ‗her mantle‘, ‗her throat‘, ‗her
looks‘, ‗her wit‘, ‗his daughter‘s self‘, ‗anybody‘s gift‘, ‗Fra Pandolf‘s hand‘,
Depth and passion of its earnest glance‘, ‗spot of joy‘, ‗duchess‘ cheek‘,
‗The bough of cherries‘, ‗your master‘s known munificence‘, ‗pretence of
mine‘ and ‗Claus of Innsbruck‘. In this regard, Leech (2006: 73) observes as
follows:

―Possessive pronouns can stand alone as the head of an NP: This is

( Hmine). Possessive determiners are modifiers , which need a head to
follow them: This is (M my H
mouse); similarly your sister, her book,
etc. In meaning, words like my and your are equivalent to genitive
phrases (as in Gina‘s mouse), but as they are single words filling the
determiner ‗slot‘, it is simpler to treat them as determiners like the, a,
every, etc‖. (18)

Most of the NPs used by Browning include possessive determiners. They not
only show possession of something by somebody like possession of ‗gift‘ by
the duke but also make it definite. Usually the possession is shown by using
possessive determiners like my, your, her etc. or by using genitive like the
Queen‘s crown. The possession of inanimate things is shown by ‗of
construction‘. So the interpretation that results is that the speaker has definite

85
people in his mind, possibly regarding Alfanso II (1553-98), Duke of Ferrara
and his wife. The poet employed double genitive in phrases like ‗his
daughter‘s self‘ and ‗your master‘s known munificence‘. It strengthens the
view that the possessive nature of the duke compels him to use the
possessive phrases of all types. How much the duke may try to show his
generous nature, but the use of genitive discloses his true nature.

Usually in any kind of discourse ‗I‘ stands for the speaker ‗you‘ stands for
the passive listener and ‗he‘ stands for someone who is not present at the
place of conversation. Pakistani poet Ahmed Ali in his ‗On the Tenth Night
of the Tenth Moon‘ deviates from these norms, where all pronouns ‗I‘, ‗you‘,
and ‗he‘ refers to the same entity. The readers have the feeling that these
pronouns and their forms like my, mine, his etc. take them back to ‗I‘. First,
second and third persons pronouns refer to the same person and pass on the
message that there is oneness everywhere, provided one should view it.

―Who are you that walk in pursuit of me?‖

Said the shadow.― Where I go you follow me.‖

―I thought,‖ said I, ―that it were you

Who always walked ahead of me

or dogged my steps wherever I went

it‘s time this pretence came to end.‖

And I pulled my sword and raised

It in the air to settle for ever this duality.

Empty laughter filled my ears as I cut

86
 The frosty air, my enemy performing

The gesture. ―You are not you,

Nor I am I‖ said he, and opened his arms

The speaker in the poem raises his sword to settle for this duality, realizes
there is none such, and explores the hidden world. It is his vanity to attempt
to cut shadow from him. The same vanity can also be realized through some
expressions from the poem. You cannot determine the meaning of language
from its surface structure. Jacques Derrida believes that one interpretation
simply triggers another interpretation. The meaning is deferred. There are
forces present within the expression that they contradict the literal meaning
of the expression for example when we say ‗Sky is the limit‘ and validate its
truth, we realize that in fact there is no upper limit to the sky. Therefore, the
sky is not the limit. This semantic twist is possible in this poem also. In the
poem the speaker in attempt to cut his shadow from himself draws his sword
to settle for ever this duality and says ‗I cut the frosty air.‘ If we validate the
truth, we find he means,‗I cannot cut the frosty air‘. Therefore, to settle for
duality in this regard means you cannot settle for duality, as there is none as
such.

Australian poet Bruce Beaver in his poem ‗Exit‘ breaks or rather extends the
process of word formation that is conversion of a word from one part of
speech (adjective) to another (noun). Normally we use ‗fast‘ as adjective or
adverb whereas ‗slow‘ is also normally used as adjective, some time also
adverb, though commonly ‗slowly‘ is used as adverb. Here in the poem both
words are treated as ‗noun‘.

―Most fellow travelers vary fast with slow;

Adherence to a time-table soon cools

87
 The catch is, if you stay, then I must go.‖

One more word that is interesting is the verb ‗vary‘ seems to have used in
both senses; (i) transitively: ‗X varies Y‘ (where X is singular or plural)
means X causes Y to be different and (ii) intransitively: ‗X vary‘ (where X is
plural) means things of the same type vary. They are different from one
another. Significance of the lines is this that either treatment of transitive or
intransitive to the verb ‗vary‘ yields the same semantic value.

Transitive interpretation: Most travelers (X) cause ‗fast‘(Y) to change.

Normally we do not change ‗fast‘, but here the poet extends the phrase as
‗fast with slow‘. In ‗English Grammar Today‘, Leech gives the following
structure to noun phrase {(M)n H (M)n}. The phrase ‗fast with slow‘
resembles like a noun phrase in which ‗fast‘ functions like noun and head of
NP and ‗with slow‘ functions as Prepositional Phrase. Prepositional Phrase is
a phrase with one preposition and one NP. In this PP, ‗with‘ is preposition
and ‗slow‘ functions like NP. So, in order to treat ‗fast‘ and ‗slow‘ as noun,
the readers have to associate these words with any other word that may have
close proximity with them and it is no other word than ‗speed‘; fast: high
speed and slow: low speed. In conclusion, the interpretation that comes out is
‗Most travelers vary high speed with low speed. Due to different speed of
travelers, they cannot exit simultaneously. So, in the third line he says, ‗The
catch is, if you stay, then I must go.‘

Intransitive interpretation: Most travelers (X) vary fast with slow. In

conclusion, most travelers are different from one another and that they still
change fast. The change is ‗with slow‘ because it cannot be noticed so easily.
Since all travelers are different, they cannot exit simultaneously.

The West Indian poet Edward Baugh in his ‗Elemental‘ constructs one mega
sentence depicting the whole trekking scene in which the speaker ascends
mountain at night and descends in sunlight.
88
 I would have words as tenacious as mules

to bear us, sure-footed

up the mountain of night

to where, at daybreak,

we would shake hands with the sun

and breathe the breezes of the farthest ocean

and, as we descended,

in sunlight,

We would be amazed

to see what hazards we had passed.

It is interesting to note that the sentence contains six clauses out which four
clauses contain the modal verb ‗would‘: ‗would have‘, ‗would shake‘,
‗would breathe‘ and ‗would be‘ and two clauses do not. Out of the two, one
is in simple past: ‗descended‘ and other is in the perfect past: ‗had passed‘.
The clause in the perfect past comes as a sub clause of the clause ‗would be
amazed‘; as a result, all ‗would‘ clauses describe some actions or something
that has not happened in reality. The only clause that is free of this ‗would‘
effect is the clause having the verb ‗descended‘. These linguistic findings
help the reader to interpret that only descent that is fall is possible if one
determines to ascent the mountain of night. The simple past tense describes
an event. As a result, the reader confronts the theme of facts as opposed to
imagination. Fact superimposes imagination. It is only in sunlight that one
can really experience the world; at night it is altogether impossible to view
the world. Further, it is striking to note that words are mules to bear us ‗sure
footed‘, because mule is such animal that is believed not to bear anything.
89
Thus this ‗would construction‘ again supports the non-guarantee in this
context too.

‗The Mystic Drum‘ by Gabriel Okara is yet another example of an internal

grammatical deviation. It is a typical African poem with the life force of the
poet‘s African ethos. As the title of the poem suggests it has a mystical
obscurity. The poem consciously refuses to reveal the meaning. The beating
of the drums is closely associated with African life. It is ritualistic and
therefore mystical. It is a collective consciousness of common person. The
beating is continued within the poet. It brings life to the outer objects viz.
men, women and fish. The effect of drum beating goes on widening its
ripples and it takes in its grip the quick, the dead, the sun, the moon, the river
gods, trees etc. The effect is so acute that men and fishes interchange their
being, till then the nature Goddess is happy and exhibits her beautiful form
again and again. However it is interesting to note that as soon as the inside
mystic drum stops to beat, the nature Goddess loses her beauty and gets
transformed into the ugliest form. Now this message of transformation is
also conveyed by changing the cohesion. He has used the cohesive devices
(1) but and (2) and. The use of ‗but‘ suggests conventional implicatures. The
use of ‗and‘ suggests conversational implicatures. Geoffrey N. Leech (1983:
11) says in this regard as follows:

―I shall take account of what Grice has called CONVENTIONAL

IMPLICATURES, i.e. pragmatic implications which are derived directly

from meanings of words, rather than via conversational principles

(for example in the sentence she was poor, but she was honest, the
word but carries the implicatures that for a person to be poor is a
good reason for supposing him not to be honest)‖. (19)

Whereas, in this regard Roland Posner observes in Searle‘s (1980: 185) book
as follows:

90
 ―In order to support the meaning-maximalist analysis of the word
and, one often compares it with the word but. But seems to share with
and the semantic features of conjunctivity and connexity. Instead of
successivity, it has adversativity as its third semantic feature.
Someone who says but implies that the facts described in the
following sentence are unexpected or contrary to the present context.

However, this parallelism is misleading. In contrast to the

successivity of and the adversativity of but is not cancellable.
Someone who says:

8 (a) Annie is Martha‘s daughter, but she is married to Peter and then

goes on to say:

9 * However, I don‘t mean to say that there is an opposition between

the two facts.

will not be taken seriously since there is then no way to explain his
saying but in 8 (a). Finally, non-detachability does not hold for
adversativity. In many cases, the assumption of adversativity will
vanish if the but-sentence is reformulated in such a way that the rest
of its content is preserved‖.(20)

Posener describes 7 types of ‗ands‘. They are as follows:

1. a successive and –meaning ‗and after that‘.

2. a simultaneous and –meaning ‗and during this time.

3. a local and –meaning ‗and there.

4. a directional and –meaning ‗and coming from it‘.

5. an instrumental and –meaning ‗and thereby‘.

91
6. a conditional and –meaning ‗if….‘.

7. an explanatory and –meaning ‗and therefore‘.

The aforesaid findings of the scholar avail the following insight.

1. ‗but‘ and ‗and‘ have successitivity, connexity, and conjunctivity as

semantic features.

2. ‗but‘ without adversativity is impossible.

3. ‗and‘ may convey any kind of meaning depending on the context and facts

described in the constituent sentences.

4. For ‗but‘, implications are directly derived from meanings of the words.

For ‗and‘, implications are derived from context.

These findings can be applied to the ‗Mystic Drum‘. The following stanza
occurs thrice in the poem almost as refrain

But standing behind a tree

with leaves around her waist

she only smiled with a shake of her head

Whereas the ninth stanza of the poem reads as follow

And behind the tree she stood

with roots sprouting from her

feet and leaves growing on her head

and smoke issuing from her nose

92
 and her lips parted in her smile

turned cavity belching darkness.

These two stanzas are not only semantically related with each other but also
syntactically too. In that, they end with a full stop. The semantic relation is
that in both stanzas she is standing behind the tree. ‗standing behind a tree‘ is
a reduced clause opposed to the corresponding main clause in the ninth
stanza, ‗And behind the tree she stood‘. In the refrain the poet, simply makes
mention of her waist as opposed to the detailed mention in the ninth stanza
regarding her feet, her head, her nose and her lips. The line ‗with leaves
around her waist‘ brings indirectly before the eyes of the readers the hidden
beauty of the woman. Whereas the direct depiction of her feet, her head, her
nose and her lips in the ninth stanza brings the ugliness to the front. This
contrastive description of the same woman gives the reader insight to
interpret the well-known fact ‗Beauty lies in concealing the beauty‘.

For our purpose of interpretation, we can reformulate the sentence as follow:

The mystic drum beat in my inside but she smiled. The semantic feature of
adversativity of ‗but‘ renders the meaning that ‗Usually she does not smile
when the mystic drum beats in my inside‘. This time she unexpectedly or
ironically smiled because she foresaw the adverse effect of overbeating of
drums.

As seen in earlier discussion, ‗and‘ may convey any kind of meaning

depending on the context and facts described in the constituent sentences.
All seven types of meaning of ‗and‘ given earlier are possible. The poet fully
utilized the ambiguity and the force of ambiguity in consciously creating
gaps of meaning by the use of ‗and‘. The poet forces the readers to fill in the
gaps with their fresh insights. Almost each stanza excluding the refrain has
expression beginning with ‗and‘ e.g. ‗and fishes danced‘, ‗and the dead to

93
dance and to sing‘, ‗and the trees began to dance‘, ‗And then the mystic
drum in my inside stopped to beat‘, ‗and behind the tree she stood‘ etc. ‗and‘
is an ambiguous word. In this poem, the poet enhances its ambiguity still to a
higher plane by creating gaps. As a conjunction ‗and‘ joins two sentences or
words or in a list comes at the end to add the last item. However, in the
poem, the poet intentionally uses it to add more meaning. So when the poem
reads,

The mystic drum beat in my inside

and fishes danced in the rivers

the reader is free to any meaning of the word ‗and‘. One reader may take the
meaning (considering it as an explanatory ‗and‘) ‗and therefore fishes danced
in the rivers‘, other reader may take the meaning (considering it as a
successive ‗and‘) ‗and after that fishes danced in the rivers. It adds to
plurality of meaning and to the obscurity too.

The title of Margaret Atwood‘s poem ‗This is a Photograph of Me‘ is

semantically deviant. Normally, we say ‗This is My Photograph‘. She uses
‗of construction‘ not only to attract the attention of the readers but also by
deviating from the normal use, she seeks an opportunity to use the indefinite
article ‗a‘. The indefinite article ‗a‘ is normally used before countable nouns
to show the quantity ‗one‘. She would have missed the opportunity, if she
had used the title in a normal way. It seems that she expects readers to put
tonic accent on the indefinite article ‗a‘, while reading the poem, as she
herself seems to have pronounced with tonic accent while composing the
poem. This does not only bring ‗a‘ to foreground but also significantly
contributes to the interpretation.

In English phonology, according to objective rules tonic accent falls on

major group of words that are those words that belong to the category of

94
noun, adjective, verb and adverb. However, according to subjective rules
(according to the wish of speaker) it may fall on minor group of words that
are those words which belong to the category of modal, preposition,
conjunction, articles etc. This can be applied to the title. The title can be read
as follows.

1. This is a Photograph of Me.

2. This is a Photograph of Me.

3. This is a Photograph of Me.

4 This is a Photograph of Me.

5. This is a Photograph of Me.

6. This is a Photograph of Me.

Thus the title can be read in six different ways and every time the meaning
will be different. In case of the poem, subjective rule shall apply because the
speaker is the poet herself and she has deliberately deviated from the normal
use. Therefore, it can be safely said that she expects her readers to read like
no. 3 utterance above. Consequently, the readers shall take the meaning of
the indefinite article as ‗one‘. The title may mean in that case ‗This is ONE
Photograph of me.‘ Since this is ONE, there should have been many
photographs. The word ‗This‘ is a denotative word. It gives the idea that she
is trying to show a typical photograph. Having read the entire poem, the
readers come to know the house, the branch and the tree are kinds of
photographs of her. The sense of belonging for the house and the lake has
lasted for years. She has become one with the picture that her picture
resembled the picture of the house, the branch and the tree.

2.3.8. Dialectal Deviations

The African poet Wole Soyinka mixes Standard English with West African
Pidgin English. In his ‗To My First White Hairs‘ he uses expressions from

95
West African Pidgin English e.g. Chimney-spouts, cloudfleeces, milk-thread
etc. Whereas expressions like fungoid sequins, febrile sight have bearings
from the indigenous African language, Yoruba. This dialectal deviation from
Standard English foregrounds not only the African language but also the
African culture, in opposition to the white culture depicted by three white
hairs. G.N. Leech (1977: 49) writes in this regard as follows:

―DIALECTICISM, or the borrowing of features of socially or regionally

defined dialects, is a minor form of license not generally available to

the average writer of functional prose, who is expected to write in the
generally accepted and understood dialect known as ‗Standard
English‘. But it is, of course, quite commonly used by story-tellers and
humorists. For the poet, dialecticism may serve a number of
purposes‖. (21)

Edward Brathwaite, the West Indian poet narrates a panic story of a slave in
his poem ‗Tizzic‘. In order to evoke the picture of the West Indian culture he
employs the words from their own language as follows:

1. rain through the roof of his have

nothing cottage; kele, kalinda-stamp,
the limbo, calypso-season camp,
these he loved best of all;

2. After the bambalula bambulai

he was a slave again.
In these two stanzas the poet employs many words directly from the West
Indian language: the limbo, kele, kalinda-stamp, calypso, bambalula
bambulai etc. This switching to the local languages serves the poet to
reinforce the theme of the poem namely the loss of culture and slavery more
effectively. The limbo is a typical West Indian dance in which the dancer has
96
to undergo a low bar, for every turn the bar is lowered still more. Thus, the
dance typically describes the continual lowering human conditions of the
West Indian slaves. Calypso is a West Indian riddle song to find the right
word. With this association, the life of the slave has become such riddle that
it cannot be resolved. While clarifying the use of code switching, Simpson
(2011: 102) states as follows:

―The term code switching is normally used to explain transitions

between distinct languages in a text, and a literary code-switching is
a sophisticated technique which signals movement between different
sphere of reference and has important consequences for a range of
thematic intentions‖.(22)

Paul Simpson believes that all kinds of speech and writing are framed in a
dialect of some sort whether it is standard or non-standard. Keeping this
view in consideration, Sylvia Plath‘s ‗Daddy‘ can be analyzed on the basis of
dialect used. She uses a Standard English all through her poem but
introduces a few German words in the poem. Thus switches from code of
English language to the code of German language.

1. I used to pray to recover you

Ach, du.

2. It struck in a barb wire snare

Ich, ich, ich, ich,

The lines above in italics are in German language. Ach,du means ‗O, you!‘
and Ich means ‗I‘. Since the poet uses German words, the readers remain
conscious of the German ancestry of her father. Significantly enough, the
poem is about father and daughter. The German words refer to the same
relations. Since the personality of her father is depicted as a hard hearted
97
strong person, ‗Ach, du‘ occurs only once to show the strong hold of the
man, whereas in contrast, the occurrence of ‗ich‘ is repeated four times to
suggest her trauma and suffering.

2.3.9. Deviations of Historical Period

Geoffrey Leech (1957: 51) while commenting on deviations of historical

period writes about the poet as follows:

―We must also note that he has ‗the freedom of the language‘, in the
sense that he is not restricted to the language of his own particular
period, as is the case with more commonplace types of linguistic
transaction. It might be said, in fact, that the medium of English
poetry is the language viewed as a historical whole, not just as a
synchronous system shared by the writer and his contemporaries.
James Joyce thought that a writer must be familiar with the history of
his language- that he must, in short, be a philologist. T.S. Eliot
expressed similar point of view, in more general terms, when he
insisted that ‗no poet ….. has his complete meaning alone. His
significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to
dead poets and artists‘. Such sentiments help to explain why many
poets have felt that they share the same language, the same
communicative medium, as poets of earlier generations, whatever
important changes the language may have undergone in the
meantime‖ .(23)

Therefore, many poets employ the language of other ages. In employing the
language of other ages, in a sense they deviate from the historical period.
John Milton modeled his epics ‗Paradise Lost‘ and ‗Paradise Regained‘ on
classical epics like Iliad and the Aeneid. His epics not only show his study of
classical languages but also the use of them. His ‗The Invocation‘ constitutes
98
the opening of Paradise Lost. The impact of classical language can be
witnessed in the phrases like ‗didst inspire‘, ‗dost prefer‘, ‗know‘st‘, ‗sat‘st‘,
‗mad‘st‘ etc. By employing these words, the poet not only deviates from the
language of his time but also is successful in creating the biblical ambience
appropriate to the epic.

2.4. Conclusion

The deviations are poetic licenses.The deviations enable the poet to express
something inexplicable, which would have been impossible otherwise.It does
not only clarify the meaning but also establishes the truth.Western concept of
deviation and eastern concept of Vakrokti add beauty to the poem. Lexical
deviation of ‗be‘ in ‗Let be be finale of seem‘ in ‗The Emperor of Ice-cream‘
and semantic deviation in ‗mortal taste‘ in ‗The Invocation‘ invites readers to
interpret the deviation in order to satiate its intellectual and aesthetic
pleasure. Phonological deviation in ‗Of man‘s first disobedience and the
fruit‘ invites its readers to think seriously about the first sin. Morphological
deviation in the words ‗Richard Cory‘ enables the poet to express more than
the literal meaning of the words. Syntactical deviation of verb less clause in
‗In a Station of the Metro‘ sets free its reader to imagine the contrast or the
comparison on his own without any restrictions of the poet. Graphological
deviation of capitalization of ‗THREE WHITE HAIRS‘ in ‗To My First White
Hairs‘ serves the purpose of foregrounding. Grammatical deviation in ‗The
Mystic Drum‘ especially in the use of ‗stood‘ at the place of ‗standing‘
suggests that beauty is always a dynamic mental process and never a static
process. Dialectal deviation in the use of language of poem helps the poet to
create the environment of typical community. Historical deviation allows the
poet to create the suitable ambience required for the time depicted in the
poem.

99
 REFERENCES

1.Wales, Katie. A Dictionary of Stylistics. London: Pearson Education, 2001.

2. Seturaman,V.S., C.T. Indra, T. Shriraman.Practical Criticism. Madras:

Macmillan,1995
3. Widdowson H.G. Stylistics and the Teaching of Literature.London:
Longman,1975.
4.Wales, Katie. A Dictionary of Stylistics. London: Pearson Education, 2001.

5.Wales, Katie. A Dictionary of Stylistics. London: Pearson Education, 2001.

6. Lyons, John. Semantics. New York: Cambridge Press, 2001.

7.Wales, Katie. A Dictionary of Stylistics. London: Pearson Education, 2001.

8. Lyons, John. Semantics. New York: Cambridge Press, 2001.

9. Lyons, John. Semantics. New York: Cambridge Press, 2001.

10. Lyons, John. Semantics. New York: Cambridge Press, 2001.

11. Jeffries, Lesley, Dan MacIntyre. Stylistics. New York: Cambridge

University Press, 2010.

12. Simpson, Paul. Stylistics. London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group,
2004.
13. Widdowson, H.G. Stylistics and the Teaching of Liteature.London:
Longman,1975.
14. Maclaren, I.S. ‗The Yeatsian Presence in A.J.M. Smiths ―like an Old,
Proud: King in Parable‖. Article downloaded from Google Web Engine
on 12/3/12.
15. Jeffries, Lesley, Dan MacIntyre. Stylistics. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2010.
100
16.Widdowson, H.G. Practical Stylistics. Somerset: Oxford University
Press,2011.
17. Seturaman,V.S., C.T. Indra, T. Shriraman. Practical Criticism. Madras:
Macmillan,1995.
18. Leech,Geoffrey N. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman,1983.
19. Leech, Geoffrey, Margaret Deuchar and Robert Hoogenraad. English
Grammar Today. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2006.
20. Searle, J.R., Ferene Kiefer, Manfred Bierwisch (edited). Speech Act
Theory and Pragmatics. London: D. Reidel Publishing Company,1980.
21. Leech Geoffrey N. A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. London:
Longman,1977.
22. Simpson, Paul. Stylistics. London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group,
2011.
23. Leech Geoffrey N. A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. London:
Longman, 1977.

101