Whitman's "One's Self I Sing": A Linguistic and Stylistic Analysis Based on Formalism.

This paper is a linguistic stylistic analysis of Walt Whitman's lyric, "One's Self I Sing". The study involves an analysis and synthesis that examine how ordinary simple language has been used in the realization of a particular subject matter, quantifying all the linguistic means that coalesced to achieve a special aesthetic purpose. These linguistic features as applied here to Whitman's poem include how, through a network of lexical selection (diction), the tone in the text is revealed; how the stylistically significant phrasal and clausal typology, sentence structures and punctuation patterns have combined to produce the aesthetics of the poem under study. The 'democratic theme' in the poem is brought out with amazing flexibility and dexterity. Additionally, the paper also looks into the aspects of Formalist Criticism and how these aspects help the reader to focus on the form which eventually leads to the content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]