Linguistic Foregrounding In Buffalo Bill By E. E. Cummings: A Stylistic Analysis

To begin with, stylistics in the one hand is a discipline of applied linguistics that utilizes linguistic theories, perspectives and methods in analyzing all the literary narratives. More tellingly, stylistics in the one side is a field of study that stands between literary criticism and linguistics, i.e. it involves both literature and linguistics. Foregrounding in the other side refers to the use of literary devices (poetic language, parallelism and deviation for instance) for the sake of challenging the common and/or traditional literary norms and achieving deautomatization or literary –aesthetic functions. In addition, e. e. Cummings American poet;is considered as one of the most celebrated poets in the modern period. He is worldly known for his Avant-grade typography, nonconformist construction and eccentric capitalization. Therefore, the main contention of this paper is to analyze literarily and stylistically Cummings’ poem Buffalo Bill in all the stylistic levels (graphological, phonological, lexical, morphological, syntactic and semantic levels). Accordingly, this paper presents e. e. Cummings as a unique modernist poet. It explains extensively what do the concepts foregrounding and stylistics mean. Besides, this paper argues how Cummings resolved to accomplish ‘literariness’ in his poem through using eccentric typography, rebellious structures and uncommon capitalization.