A Phono- Stylistic Analysis of Emily Dickinson's poem " Our Share of Night to Bear"

The aim of any stylistic study is the interpretation of written and spoken texts in a way that analyzes the linguistic behavior used in such texts. There are different levels of stylistic analysis. Stylistic phonological analysis tackles sound patterns to observe the foregrounding of linguistic behavior either by deviation or parallelism. This study phonologically analyzes Emily Dickinson's poem," Our Share of Night to Bear." The poem has two contradictory themes: life and death. The study hypothesizes that phonological devices as alliteration, meter, rhyme, and onomatopoeia, manage to present the different two themes of the poem. It depends on (Ufot, 2013) , (Abrams & Harpham, 2014) and (BernardLubin et al., 1971) as phono-stylistic models to discuss the stylistic use of linguistic units of the poem and evaluate the reasons behind the deviations, and how that reflects Dickinson's style in presenting the ideas of life and death. Although, there is a frequent use of ballad meter, which is more conversational than common meters, there are cases of deviations towards the amphimacer meters to foreground a comic paradox that resembles a lonely lady and night.