THE USE OF TRANSFORMATIONAL-GENERATIVE GRAMMAR IN POETRY APPRECIATION: A CASE OF STYLISTIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

This paper proposes an approach to understanding and appreciation of literature called stylistics. Stylistics is an analysis of verbal texts by way of investigating their language structure, thus, resulting in a more objective interpretation. Specifically, the poem analyzed in this paper was explicated via transformational-generative grammar espoused by Noam Chomsky. Meanings from the poem were unraveled by discovering the deep structure generated by the phrase-structure rules. This paper has shown how the teacher’s knowledge on deep structures can be extended to students so as to provide them tools in understanding complex constructions and deviations in poetry; and use this knowledge to unravel meanings in their readings even outside literature classes. A teacher who is linguistically knowledgeable will be in a better position to devise sound pedagogic approaches that help leaning process more fruitful.