Anbar University Journal of Languages & Literature

Abstract

This study investigates the pragma-stylistic analysis of the style of selected Siegfried Sassoon’s war poems. Lawal’s (2012) model of pragmatic theory and Leech and Short’s (2007) rhetorical devices have been adopted for the present research. They reflect adequacy concerning the pragmatic elements and rhetorical devices that are needed for the pragma stylistic analysis. Four war poems have been selected, namely, “Suicide in the Trenches”, “The Dug-Out”, “The Hero”, and “The Death Bed”. The study aims to identify the adopted pragmatic elements in the style of war poems and their influence on the style of the poet and the presented message. The analysis shows the use of representative speech acts more frequently than other types. Also, the war poems tend to use person deixis as the most used type of deictic expressions. Finally, psychological, physical, and linguistic contexts are the main types of contexts in all the war poems.