FOREGROUNDING IN SPOKEN WORD POETRY: A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

This study analyzed stylistic foregrounding in Filipino spoken word poetry, such as parallelism and deviation. Thirty (30) English-language spoken word poetry were analyzed using stylistic analysis. In terms of stylistic parallelism, it comprised of the following: [1] lexical parallelism, which consisted of epanalepsis, anaphora, epistrophe, anadiplosis, chiasmus, and epizeuxis; [2] syntactic parallelism, which includes synonymous parallelism, antithetic parallelism, constructive parallelism and climactic parallelism; [3] phonological parallelism, which comprised of alliteration, assonance and rhyme; [4] grammatical parallelism, which consisted of grammatical repetition; and [5] semantic parallelism which involves climax, synonymy, and antonymy. On the other hand, the stylistic deviation consisted of the following: [1] lexical deviation, which comprised of neologism, affixation, and compounding; [2] grammatical-morphological deviation which includes malapropism; [3] grammatical-syntactic deviation which consisted of inversion, ungrammaticality, negative sentences and ellipsis; [4] phonological deviation, which comprised of elision, aphaeresis and apocope; and [5] semantic deviation, which consisted of pleonasm, periphrasis, tautology, oxymoron, paradox, synecdoche, metonymy, metaphor, simile, symbolism, hyperbole, and irony.  Furthermore, phonological parallelism and semantic deviation emerged as the most frequently used stylistic techniques observed in the samples. The study implies that spoken word poetry can be integrated into the language curriculum as a rich resource for teaching stylistic features across lexical, syntactic, phonological, grammatical, and semantic levels. By identifying the most common forms of parallelism and deviation, the study contributes concrete and culturally relevant examples that educators can use to strengthen students’ analytical and creative language skills.

Article visualizations: