A study on Associative meaning in Classic American Poetry by Emily Dickinson

ABSTRACT

Semantics is a branch of linguistics, which deals with the study of meanings of words, sentences, phrases, etc. Every meaning is not only based on the dictionary, however it can be interpreted in other aspects. Meaning itself has many kinds, one of them is associative meaning because this is part of linguistic meaning and abstract meaning that need deep thinking for people who want to study with explanation, example and fact, associative meaning includes connotative meaning, stylistic (social meaning), affective meaning, reflected meaning, and collocative meaning. In many poems there are some kinds of meaning pattern, where its meaning cannot be interpreted based on dictionary only, especially concerning the allusion and connotation meaning.

The writer is interested in choosing this topic, with some reasons. First, Emily Dickinson is one of popular poets who brings modem pattern in her classic poetry, so that classic pattern and modem pattern can be integrated with each other. Second, the contents of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, after analyzing process, have many types of meaning included in this poetry.

This research aims to find and analyze some kinds of associative meaning used in Emily Dickinson’s poetry and also determine the most dominant associative meaning included in this poetry.

This study uses qualitative descriptive research by semantic approach. From the finding and discussion, it was found that affective meaning is most dominant in these poems, where Emily Dickinson often expresses about her personal feeling concerning love, death, environment phenomena, and also eternity. Then, sometimes she used some styles in writing based on her perspective, and some of her poems describe about allusion or connotative interpretation. The writer also found the meaning which must be adapted to the environment, so it needs to be changed, and meanings which have ambiguity also can be found in these poems. Therefore, it has relationship with semantic theory.

Finally, it is suggested that many semantics material need to be enriched with, some great American poetry collection from the popular poets, and also other literature book related with the poems.