A Comparative Stylistic Analysis of Anne Hunter’s ‘Winter’ and Charles Simic’s ‘Against Winter’: Pedagogical Implications for EFL Students

Abstract

This paper examined two poems: ‘Winter’ by Anne Hunter and ‘Against Winter’ by Charles Simic from a stylistic perspective. It conducted a stylistic analysis to elucidate how the poets’ intended meanings are constructed in an effective manner through the principles of ‘foregrounding’: linguistic deviation, linguistic parallelism, and informality, in ways that reflect these poets’ distinctive style. This study argues that informality is complementary to the other principles; that is, while linguistic deviation and parallelism contribute to content, informality contributes to form (how content is delivered). Altogether they create the poet’s distinct style. In spite of enormous stylistic analysis studies, there is a dearth of research that has conducted a comparative stylistic analysis of poems sharing the same perspectives. Employing a qualitative approach, the two poems were compared with regard to how each poet described the winter, and thus how linguistic tools were used to construct messages about this season. The analysis enhances students’ literary awareness of stylistic analysis as an effective tool to better understand texts and write with their style. The study concluded with important pedagogical implications.