“Voices through masks: a stylistic analysis of selected Covid-19 pandemic poems”

Times of pandemics usually witness a remarkable surge of interest among various poets who, in response to the impending threats and anxiety brought about by the uninvited guest, provide multiple ways of portraying the crisis and its inevitable impact. Pandemic poetry provides a fertile source of data for relating language to its poetic artistic function in general and for studying some linguistic and stylistic features that characterize language in pandemic poems in particular. This study seeks to depict and analyze the stylistic features employed in four Covid-19 pandemic poems with the objective of linking poetic style to the specific representations of experience associated with the pandemic. The samples of the study are four English-language pandemic poems selected from online sources on Covid-19. The qualitative approach is employed to collect, classify and analyze the selected samples of poems inductively in order to find out the distinctive stylistic features of the selected Covid-19 pandemic poems. The framework of analysis employs Leech and Short's (2007) method of stylistic analysis in which four categories are tackled: lexical categories, grammatical categories, figures of speech and context and cohesion. The foregrounding theory also serves as a strategy employed for analyzing the selected poems in order to highlight the prominent features in the text, thereby directing focus towards the thematic concerns linked to the pandemic. The stylistic analysis serves as a tool for readers to comprehend the themes of the selected poems in relation to linguistic choices while revealing deeper layers of interpretation and appreciation of language use in pandemic poems. The selected Covid-19 pandemic poems masterfully communicate medical themes through various stylistic elements, bringing together the fields of medicine, poetry and stylistics. The scientific examination of the virus and its physical and psychological consequences together with the representation of the healthcare system during the pandemic formed the subject matter of the four selected poems. Repetition, figures of speech, paradox, hyperbole and parallelism, are among the most frequently used stylistic devices that managed to underscore the ideas of uncertainty, confusion, anxiety, and pain associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.