A Cognitive Stylistic Analysis of Oswald Mtshali’s “Men in Chains”

This paper presents a cognitive stylistic analysis of the poem “Men in Chains” by Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali (1968). Cognitive stylistics focuses primarily on explaining what happens during the reading process and how it influences the interpretations made by readers in understanding textual meaning. Though meaning is located in the formal structure of the literary text, readers can also approach meaning by deploying aspects of their previous background knowledge. Therefore, the study examines how a special configuration of language is used to realise a particular subject matter and a few selected figurative tropes to achieve a special aesthetic purpose. In the research, all primary data were sourced from the poem, and the secondary data were derived from related works and textbooks. The Schema Theory introduced by Richard C. Anderson (1977) and Conceptual Metaphor Theory by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) were used to analyse the data collected for the study. The analysis reveals that coherence among figures of speech and the use of extended and complex figurative expressions create new stylistic frameworks and metaphorical formulas that illustrate the idea of novelty and creativity in the poem. Based on the above, the work concludes that cognitive stylistics is effective in the study and interpretation of poetry. It can also be used in studying and teaching poetry to enhance better understanding and appreciation of any poetic texts.