The Construction of Patriotism in Bekas's The Small Mirrors.

Abstract

Sherko Bekas (1940-2013) is a contemporary poet whose father, Faiq Bekas (1905-1948), was a well-known poet within traditional Kurdish poetry. Sherko's resistance activities and fight against Saddam’s Baath regime in Iraq are clear in The Small Mirrors. However, despite his worldwide reputation, his poetry has never been clearly studied in the field of stylistic analysis.

The Small Mirrors consists of several poems written during 1988-1987 and mainly deals with war on north of Iraq. This study aims to create a version of the Critical Stylistic model that helps me to show the constructions of patriotism, the ideologies behind such constructions and the fictional world in The Small Mirrors. This work aims to apply five textual conceptual functions: Naming and Describing; Equating and Contrasting; Representing Processes/Events/States of being; Assuming and Implying and Prioritizing on The Small Mirrors. I also analyse how these textual consceptual functions construct metaphors.

The study reveals that three textual conceptual functions construct metaphors. Also, the results suggest that the speaker aims to draw the attention and support of the readers/hearers and that all textual conceptual functions are consistent in the construction of this aim. However, the use of critical stylistic analysis of poetry proved problematic and raises considerations for how poems should be analysis. Various methods given tentatively in the analysis also offer opportunities for further research.