Cohesion, Style, and Ecological Consciousness in Bassey’s “Return to Being”: A Discourse-Stylistic Approach

Abstract

Discourse-stylistic devices are crucial in creating meaning and coherence in poetry. Currently, studies in discourse-stylistics of poetry remain limited, with most existing studies often focusing on the stylistic aspect of the genre. Thus, this study is among the first to examine Nnimmo Bassey’s eco-poem “Return to Being” through a discourse-stylistic approach. Drawing on Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion framework and Leech and Short’s (2007) stylistic model, the study explored how the use of cohesive devices and stylistic choices contribute to the poem’s environmental message. The findings revealed that grammatical and lexical cohesive devices were used to enhance the coherence of the poem. The grammatical cohesive devices found include reference and conjunction while substitution and ellipsis were absent. Again, lexical cohesion was achieved through repetition, synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms and collocations. Moreover, Bassey employed stylistic features such as grammatical categories and figures of speech to highlight the devastation of the natural environment of the Niger Delta and call for its restoration. The findings deepen our understanding on the discourse-stylistic devices use in eco-poetry.