A Cognitive Stylistic study of poetic discourse

Abstract

    The study is concerned with the investigation of cognitive stylistic in the selected poem written by Emily Dickinson in order to show the effect of different cognitive stylistic devices especially the use of mental spaces on the interpretation of meaning. These mental spaces can help construct grammars that conceptualize the poet's world view. They are interacted and used not only in creation conceptual integration but also used to model dynamic mapping in the thought and language.

          The analysis has shown that cognitive stylistics is used as a device to provide a systematic and scientific approach to discourse authors and readers understanding of the world and explain how these interpretations are reflected in discourse organization. It tries to explain the way the cognitive processes are involved in meaning constructions. Furthermore, mental spaces can help construct grammars that conceptualize the poet's world view. Dickinson use of self-anaphor has created a world of possibilities, a world in which things can happen and be made to happen through the agencies of the self. Finally, metaphor is used as a scheme by which people conceptualize their experience to transfer, modify or blend mental constructs especially in the way by which one mental representation is mapped onto another when we read a text.