Echo of Romanticism, Shadow of Revolution: A Socio Cognitive analysis of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s and Walt Whitman’s poetry

Author(s) : Areej Farooq & Meesum Alam

Abstract:

Abstract
The paper analyses the revolutionary discourse masked by romanticism in Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Walt Whitman’s poetry in the light of the socio-cognitive approach of Teun. A. van Dijk. By using the approach, this paper explores the choice of lexemes and selective pronouns in poets’ work to investigate whether their poetry was an upsurge of powerful emotions or consciously constructed by manipulating socio-cultural awareness of readership to accelerate the process of change in respective societies. It is observed that the selective pronouns “I” in Whitman’s and “we” in Faiz’s work evoke the holistic concept of democracy, rather than creating polarizations, eliminate it and invite readers to participate and respond. The lexemes in Whitman’s poetry are celebratory to propagate the collective American idiom; the word choice in Faiz’s poetry poses a protest for the democratic state. Nonetheless, both poets are socio-cognitively involved in revoking shared knowledge through lexemes and selective pronouns.
Keywords: Revolutionary Discourse, Socio-cognitive Analysis, Pronouns, Lexemes