A CRITICAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN MAYA ANGELOU’S POEMS

Racial discrimination refers to the unjust treatment of individuals or communities favoring one group over others due to differences in race, nationality, gender, economic class, age, religion, physical ability, language, and other categories.Several studies have tackled this issue regarding social parameters.Yet, to the best of the researchers' knowledge, little attention has been directed towards the linguistic structures of employing racial discrimination.To fill in the gap, the present study tackles racial discrimination from a critical stylistic perspective.It aims to show how the textual-conceptual toolkit of "Naming and Describing" is employed in Maya Angelou's poems for representing racial discrimination and revealing the hidden ideologies that lie behind the poet's language.The study follows a qualitative descriptive method adopting Jeffries' framework(2010).Tables of frequencies and percentages are supplied to support the analysis.Three poems that contain the theme of racial discrimination are chosen for the purpose of analysis.These are: "Still I Rise", "Caged Bird", and "Awaking in New York".The results show that Maya utilizes naming and describing symbolized mainly by using the choice of nouns to identify and unfold her experience facing racial discrimination.She addresses her readers indirectly aiming to expose the feeling of grievance and call for justice and unity.