Synaesthetic Metaphor as a Language Style in Remi Raji’s Poetry

Abstract:

Every poet possesses a style of writing that makes his poetry different from that of others. His style of writing predominantly aids in expressing meaning to his readers. A poet’s style may be assessed in terms of language use, pattern of thematic exploration, poetic structure or figurative expression, etc. Be it as it may, there is no wide gap between his language style and meaning exploration (that is, the literary message he intends to express). This paper therefore is a study of Remi Raji’s poetry with the intention of examining the use of synaesthesia as a language style in his poetry. Adopting Burrow’s (2012) pattern, the research sets out to determine the situation that may have aroused the poet’s use of synaesthesia. According to Burrow’s argument, synaesthetic capacity was stimulated by cultural, social and technological conditions. However, we have limited our investigations to the socio-political conditions which the poems explored and the significance of synaesthesia in portraying them. The research interest therefore was not just to identify synaesthesia as a device but mainly to find out the contextual effects and how they may have helped to stimulate meaning in Remi Raji’s poetry. The poems studied were randomly selected and the method of analysis was qualitative. The conclusion of the paper is that the manifestation of synaesthesia in Remi Raji’s poems is by no means a fortition; rather, it has stylistic significance which aids the conveyance of the literary messages of the poet.