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# THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES OF THE STYLISTIC LIBERATION OF WORDSWORTH

Sheikh Saifullah Ahmed, Deb Proshad Halder

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Sheikh Saifullah Ahmed, Deb Proshad Halder. THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES OF THE STYLISTIC LIBERATION OF WORDSWORTH. Sparkling International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research Studies, 2020, 3 (3), pp.1-13. [https://hal-02971869](https://hal-02971869)

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# THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES OF THE STYLISTIC LIBERATION OF WORDSWORTH

By

*Sheikh Saifullah Ahmed & ** Deb Proshad Halder

*Lecturer, Department of English and Modern Languages, IUBAT-International University of Business Agriculture and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

**Lecturer, Department of English, Jashore Govt. Women's College, Bangladesh.

## Abstract

This paper aims to delineate the stylistic richness and liberty prevalent in the texts of the poet, Wordsworth, which are rarely manifested by the contemporaries of Wordsworth grouped as the Romantics due to their distinct thematic and stylistic features. The paper, owing to its quality of content, affords to exhume the metrical discordances, socialized dictions laid by the poet in the body of the poems that the other romantics could not afford so abundantly. It intervenes with the hypothesis that the poetic style exercised by Wordsworth nears to the taste of social stylistic patterning of everyday usages rather than all other romantic poets in the light of poetic style and diction. It aims at interpreting and critically analyzing the content of the poems by Wordsworth and those by the other contemporaries. The study involves theoretical analysis and explanatory interpretation, that claims the development of the facts through researching archives of public libraries, courtrooms, and published academic journals. It is a qualitative content analysis-based research at which secondary data from secondary sources are incorporated. Thus, the paper culminates with the content analysis where it paves to show how distinctively Wordsworth creates the dictions of the poems in order to make them socially inclusive and make the style as free as a fountain that other romantics do not tread.

**Keywords:** Diction, liberation, romantic, sociolect, style, wordsworth

## Introduction

The word 'Romanticism' is denotatively specified with a special genre containing very contrastive subject matter apart from the arena of theorization of what is classical. But the inception of this period, the very stern theorization is being variegated with multi-dimensional interpretations. Behler (1968) proceeds to define 'Romanticism' with two approaches, that is; (i) Approach to Romanticism based on the meaning of that very word and (ii) Approach to Romanticism based on the matter. And the second

approach includes the literature, the poetry, and the programmatic writing as a movement of Romanticism (p. 110). Behler (1968) referred in his paper that Friedrich Schelgel as marked 'Romantic presents a sentimental content in a fantastic form' (p. 112) which broadens romantic across the Shakespearean as well as after-medieval literature. But, the uniformity of the content and concept of the romantics that differentiated them was 'romantic imagination' which gets its definition through the pens of the romantics as Wordsworth marked it something above,
something beyond as if they thought
something true, then opened their eyes and
saw it true and beautiful. The author also
retorted that all the romantics except Lord
Byron tried something serious and deep but
the medium of their expressions and the
artistic decoration of the content distanced
them from each other as Coleridge afforded
to narrate the underlying distinction
between Wordsworth and the poet himself
marking that Wordsworth had indulged in
intervening charms in everyday phenomena
while Coleridge was experimenting on
imposing distantness in the near incidences
(Behler, 1968, p. 112). Wordsworth invoked
elementary feelings of the human heart and
this invocation necessitated emphatic and
plain languages because these sorts of
choosing disavow the aristocratic restraint
in expressions (E. L., 2019).

The poet strived to present human nature
that paved the way to choose rustic
indigenes and the expressions of naturalistic
feelings got its foundation on the languages
uncommon for the existing taste
(Wordsworth, 1800, para. 5). The deliberate
intervention of real-world languages unified
the poet, Wordsworth, and this unification
or unified way of linguistic or artistic
presentation from the part of the poet is the
projecting issue that this paper tends to
highlight. The down-to-earth incidences and
persons localize languages and this concept
is tended to investigate on the matter of
stylistic freedom in comparison to the poets
of neo-classics and culminate to the
establishment of the idea that such freedom
along with deliberate choice also creates

Wordsworth distinctively within the time
frame of romanticism in English literary
arena.

The investigation focuses solely on the real
language of men which is more than
linguistic discovery; rather it tries to
uncover the social aspects of language
(Romaine, 1994) that the poet labours to
establish through exercising stylistic
freedom by breaking the restrains of
aristocratic societal patterning of poetic
expressions. This paper investigates the
extent of stylistic liberation which aims to
result in exposing Wordsworth a distinctive
poet among his contemporaries. Thus, the
paper procreates the problems as (i)
whether Wordsworth exercises distinctive
patterning of poetic expressions, (ii)
whether his linguistic novelty has societal
aspects and, (iii) whether he surpasses his
contemporaries with societal commitment.

## Literature Review

The projection of intellectual efficacy and
rational dictates is an exercised practice that
tends to establish a norm and a diction
through the forms of literature (Robinson,
1976, p.3). This type of artefacts generates a
distinct space for these forms which then
turns to be tried and targeted for the
distinctive view of the society. Henceforth,
the neo-classic poets strived to characterize
poetry as dignified with forms and functions,
it divided classes in the society as it
deliberately mutes a class of people who
remain untouched in the contents and they
keep these literary pieces untried due to
intellectual abundances, non-societal
dictions and laborious experiments on
rhetoric and prosody. This thoughtful
distinction of language for the poetry and for
the society has nothing to impact on
linguistic constructs. Rather it is
fundamentally socio-political (Romaine,
1994, p.1).

The silence and muteness in creative
writings have their purposes. It is a decisive
tool from the part of the writers to hide
other's identities in order to serve the
greater purpose from the point of view of
that other who tends to remain silent
(Teleky, 2001). Contrary to this, the absence
is not synonymous with silence. Absence is a
socio-political construct that aims at
abnegating the existence of the others on
purpose (Guignery, 2009). It is called a
purposeful choice of abnegation because
poetry reflects individual ideas as the
replication of social experiences (Riley,
2009, p. 349) and when a selective portion
of masses is unheard, it does indicate the
culpable silencing ordained to them. William
Wordsworth, on the other hand, took a
strong stance against these illusions of neo-
classicists who faltered to reveal things as
they were (Pope, 2005). This stance against
them moved Wordsworth to collect
materials from the everyday trifling
incidents that afforded the poet knit the
body of the poetry with freedom from
metrical assonances, stylistic sophistication,
and dignified dictions.

Gelpi (1992) reviewed the work of Walter
Kalaidjian titled *Languages of Liberation:
The Social Text in Contemporary American
Poetry where the reviewer posited the idea

that the recent move of the poets towards
social inclusion changed the narratives of
the poetry. The languages turned to explore
and discover the social identity, values,
psychology, and morality. These are the
purposes of the poetry which is gaining its
momentum through liberation from
restricted versification and phraseology (p.
631).

Fruoco (2017) remarked in his medieval
polyphony that Chaucer was a man who
spoke the languages of the royal class of the
society, but his poetic urge which reclined
more from the point of view of a
sociolinguist made him aware of the
varieties of English (Northern, East Midland,
West Midland, Southern, and Kentish) and
enabled him how to produce these varieties
in order to make justice to all without paying
any bias to any variety as being spoken by
the poet himself (p.9-10). The author
evaluated his defense for the sociolinguistic
aspect of Chaucer quoting from The
Summoner's Tale where he projected that
the friar uses Latin, French as well as
provincial Middle English when situation
claims that he needs to uphold his dignity as
a cleric, to maintain his social ranks and to
involve in gossiping:

In The summoner's Tale, the friar often uses
Latin, which seems normal for a cleric, but
also tends to punctuate his speech with
French phrases, especially when he is
addressing Thomas, "O Thomas, je vous dy,
Thomas, Thomas!" ("O Thomas! Thomas!
Thomas! Je vous dis!" III.1832), and his wife,
"'Now dame,' quod he, 'now je vous dy sanz
doute'" ("Madame, je vous dis sans doute"
III.1838). Here, the Friar obviously uses fragments of French in order to make apparent his social rank and to impress Thomas's wife. But when the friar asks Thomas about the whereabouts of his spouse, he then shows little desire to react to this linguistic competition and answers in provincial Middle English, "'Yond in the yerd I trowe that she be, [...] and she wol come anon'" ("'Out in the garden, I expect,' said he [. . .] 'she's bound to come in soon'" III.1798-99). (p.11).

This is remarked as a social urge which enables the poet to draw the pictures as they are through the presentation of the languages spoken by the society people though it is polyphonic vernacular. Even the Pardoner boldly speaks: "in Latyn I speke a wordes few,/To saffron with my predicacioun,/And for to stire hem to devocioun" (VI.344-46) (and say a few words in Latin/That's to give spice and colour to my sermon/It also helps to stir them to devotion) (Fruoco, 2017, p.11).

Again, linguistic constructs, in the view of the sociolinguists, is a social phenomenon (Romaine, 1994). The poets reveal these societal aspects of language by picking up the words from everyday phenomena of life and living amidst the cosmos. These common instances are attired with semiotic implications in order to provide them with poetic implication (Miles, 1965). Thus, the change from 'nature and power to light, sun and night; from fate, virtue, scene to dream, mother, flower, sea, sky' revealed through the poetry of William Wordsworth (p. 355). Because Wordsworth had to experiment on

direct images apart from the distant and gothic implications of images which were tried by Coleridge borrowed from Germanic. And the poet advanced to endow literal associations of those direct images (p.356).

Versification and metrical composition are biding principles for poetry, which can be considered a type of restrictions on the free flow of thoughts, emotions and feelings. The rise of the novels gets its momentum to liberate the human flow of passion from structural restrictions. In the case of poetry, the blank verse was a sort of trial, though before the victory of novels, of these restrictions which culminated to free verses. William Shakespeare and Milton developed blank verses in their compositions and almost all the writers of the romantic period followed this trend of Miltonic intervention of blank verses (Shaw, 2007, p.1). It liberated the poets from the restricted principles of metrical sequencing. All the romantic poets utilized the Miltonic freedom through blank verse, though Coleridge tried little of this form. Wordsworth used this form but he diverted in most of the cases and could not maintain regularity as: "Five years have past; five summers, with the length/of five long winters! And again I hear/These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs/With a soft inland murmur. – Once again/Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs." (Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, lines 1-5) (Parini, 2005, p. 655). But the free verse is a more inspiring effort in the case of liberating the poets from the pool of sacrificial metrical pyres. If this form had been tried with much
exuberance before Walt Whitman (Kirby-Smith, 1998), it could have been William Wordsworth who proclaimed the freedom of aristocracy from the poetry.

**Methodology**

The credibility, validity, and authenticity of existing knowledge and the identified and generated knowledge can be ensured only when that knowledge is retrieved or accessed through following a rigorous methodological way so that the persons who tend to re-prove that idea to gain the identical knowledge can easily get to that pinnacle of knowledge. That is why; research claims a systematic way of investigation (Redmen & Mory, 2009). Identification of the problem, what may be a probable solution to that problem, what are the theoretical framework to investigate that problem, what are the sources of data, how the research data is collected, how the data is measured and interpreted- all are included in that systematic way of investigation which is called research design (S. Rajasekar et al., 2013, p.5). So, it is imperative to have a clear research design to begin an investigation.

**Identification of Research Problem**

The first and prime necessity for a research initiative is to identify the research problem. A problem or a central problem among a bunch of related problems can be identified through the reviews of pieces of literature (S. Rajasekar et al., 2013, p.2). The pieces of literature reviewed above indicate that the evaluation and silencing of a language spoken by a specific society do not depend

on its linguistic constructs; rather it is a political decision that determines the prominence and negligence of a language. This indication raises a problem of whether the literary pieces that indulge in aristocratic overplay of languages downplaying the language of very common people deliberately mutes the speeches of the common mass. William Wordsworth, perhaps, is the first poet who had some brooding over this problem and he declared against this hypocritical practice of the poet of the neo-classical period. Thus, the paper initiates to identify whether the poets can make a mass absent from the appearance in the literature with the references from the poets of the romantic period and whether the poet, William Wordsworth, can be justified on the fact of his effort to create a space for the men in society in his poetry.

**Theoretical Framework**

Romaine (1994) posits that language has a social perspective; it includes transmutability, Communicability, understandability, and if the poetry needs to be inclusive in respective of social class, it must ensure these criteria. Thus, the Wordsworthian effort of all-inclusiveness in his poetry is attempted to justify from the point of socio-linguistic theory.

**Choosing of Research Method**

The research problem and theoretical framework of that problem indicate that empirical data analysis suits for this purpose which aims to collect and analyze non - numerical data to search for a theme and
holistic features and it does by following the specified way that is; content / conceptual analysis (Shaghi, 2016, p.7). This paper aims at interpreting and critically analyzing the content of the poetry of the romantic poets to prove the hypothesis or disprove the null hypothesis. Consequently, the qualitative research method serves the purpose of the research as per the nature of the research.

## Data Collection Procedure

This research involves theoretical analysis and explanatory interpretation which claims the development of the facts through ‘researching archives of public libraries, courtrooms and published academic journals’. This is none the less an empirical research that claims the collection of data from secondary sources except interviews, survey, focus group discussion (Shaghi, 2016, p.7-8). Sources such as books, journals, blog posts, and previous research studies are used for the critical justification of the research problem.

## Data Analysis Method

Rajasekar et al. (2013) claim that there are two indispensable rules of modern research, such as; (i) The freedom of creative imagination necessarily subjected to rigorous experimentation and (ii) The interpretation of the facts that were collected (p.32). It is a qualitative research where secondary data from secondary sources are being used. As per the condition and nature of the research, desk-based content analysis claims acceptability.

## Conversational Aspect of Wordsworth

Kurland (2002) has a distilled remark on the language that it has a conversational aspect. This social aspect of language includes both the speakers and listeners having proper knowledge of each other, identical interests, and biases (para.5) to make conversation successful because these tools increase comprehensibility of the language, and eventually, communication is established between the parties. Wordsworth, in most of the cases, posits the ideas, thoughts and expresses feelings in such a manner that these are though emerging out of ‘I’ absorbing in ‘We. Thus, the feelings and emotions are turning to the proprietorship of them who are present there. In the poem, A Farewell, the poet, and the sister feel alike and have identical passion for the cottage, as the poem states “We leave you here in solitude to dwell/ With these our latest gifts of tender thought;/ Thou, like the morning, in thy saffron coat, /Bright gowan, and marsh-marigold, farewell!” (L.19-22). It is the tender thought for the cottage that is bestowed by both of them and the other entity, except the poet (the sister of the poet), has consent with the thought and expressions of the poet. Again, the cottage also participates with the poet and his sister in the process of merry-making, joyousness, and tranquil life. The cottage has turned to be an animate entity that can listen to the appeal of the poet and that has the power to gift. Thus, the poet lets the cottage remind of its gift to ordain to the to be wed lady who is likely to enter here: “With joyousness, and with a thoughtful cheer, /Will come to you;
to you, herself will wed; /And love the
blessed life that we lead here" (L. 30-32).
Thus, the poet, his sister, and the cottage are
equally participating in the discussion and as
if they were planning how the future would
be knitted here with the presence of the
fourth person. This conversational tone is a
central characteristic of Wordsworth's
poetry which agrees on the linguistic
property of communicability.

Provision of Space for Meaning-making

The ultimate goal of a language is to transfer
the message to others and only transferring
serves the purpose of language little. The
targeted entity must understand the
meaning, they must have comprehensibility
of the message. Gesture, posture, and pause
between the lines serve the purpose of
meaning-making as it provides space and
scope for the listeners or readers to
comprehend the meaning of the message
(Kurland, 2002). When the poet determines
he needs to transfer his meaning to more
than one, he creates spaces in the body of
the poems. The feelings and deep emotions
of the poet become social property. The poet
takes the assistance of several tools and
techniques to create this space in-text of the
poem. These are (i) continuation of a
sentence to several lines of a poem, (ii)
creating pauses in a line by the use of
periodic marks, (iii) inserting elaborative
phrases and sentences into the sentence
(Thompson, 2019). These techniques have
two purposes as (a) it tends to clarify the
statement what the poet says and (b) it
tends to make the readers believe what the
poet wants to mean. In the very first stanza

of the poem, A Complaint can be taken as the
touchstone of the evidence of the above-
stated concepts. The opening line "There is a
change" proceeds with two dashes (--/ a
space) and then it states "and I am poor".
This "dash" or space has a linguistic
implication. This dash tries to bridge two
distinct senses which could have been filled
with any gloomy expressions of faces to
project despair if these had been verbal
expressions. Here, the 'dash' implies 'filler'
that fills the gap of gesture in non-verbal
communication. This line tends to be a
photographic negative of non-verbal
communication. Again, the second and third
lines of the poem, A Complaint, exemplifies
the second step complexity of verbal
communication. "Your love hath been, nor
long ago, / A fountain at my fond heart's
door." It would have been an honest,
unfeigned confession like 'Your love hath
been a fountain at my fond heart's door'. But
the deliberate insertion of "nor long ago" has
barred to the free and smooth flow of the
confession though it provided the readers
with a temporal context of "how long ago
love had been a fountain". Thus, the poet
attempts to fill the gaps which a piece of
poetry creates through the semiotic
representation of images and that of the
urge of the metrical quest for the prosodic
principle that enlivens a poem and makes it
distinctive from other forms of writing.

The Diction of Romantic Poetry

Poetry is made distinctive through the
exercise of poetic diction, which refers to a
distinctive kind of style, words exercised
only by the poets though the romantic poets
(Especially, Wordsworth) revolted against this theory of distinctiveness and Wordsworth proclaimed using vocabularies in poetry which are near to men living in society. They used folk tales as their materials for writing and the practice of delineating materials from folk tales, rustic lives, created a sublime atmosphere around their poetry as these stories were the stories of village illiterate people (Deniz, 2009).

Thus, a transition from the dictions used in the enlightenment period was visible in the dictions of the romantic period (Enlightenment and Romanticism Vocabulary List, 2020). An interpolation of the frequencies of vocabularies used by the authors of these very two adjacent periods suffices to have a glimpse of the distinctiveness of the dictions.

Jonathan
Swift

Importune, Prodigious, Raiment, Dam, Collateral,
Curate, Farrow, Expedient.

Coleridge

Stately, Sinuous, Rills, Chaff, Thresher, Flail,
Dulcimer, Xanadu, Mount Abora.

Keats

Lethe, Wolf's bane, Nightshade, Proserpine, Psyche,
Glut, Sylvan, Tempe, Arcady, Dale, Timbrel, Cloy,
Attic, Brede, Overwrought, Pastoral

Shelly

Sepulcher, Commotion, Tempest, Azure, Consecrate,
Canopy, Entwined, Tyrants, Robes, Dirge, Quiver

Byron

Sepulcher, Commotion, Tempest, Azure, Consecrate,
Canopy, Entwined, Tyrants, Robes, Dirge, Quiver

Wordsworth

Copse, hedge-rows, Sportive, Pastoral, Sylvan, Din,
Sublime, Roe, Cataract, Genial Spirit, Exhortations.
The dictions marked and remarked are indicative in the case of characterizing all the poets existing in the romantic period and even one of the representative writers of the enlightenment period distinctively. Swift is reclining to the Latino-French somberness through his diction, Coleridge shows fondness to create a distant world of ‘Xanado’ where no human from everyday life can reach, and Keats has drawn a sylvan history at the bank of Arcady where the gods and deities of the Mount Olympus reside, and then the distant or faery world created by Coleridge and Keats turns tumultuous due to the tempest which overshadows both orient and oxidant posited through the furious voice of Shelly. He laboured to amalgam the history, culture, and tradition of orients and the oxidants in his poetry and revealed his urge to shake the world as a whole through the commotion. He mixes up the world myths in the *Alastor or the Spirit of Solitude*: “Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste/Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers/Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,/Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe’er of strange/Sculptured on the alabaster obelisk,/Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx,/Dark Æthiopia in her desert hills/....... Among the ruined temples there,/Stupendous columns, and wild images/Of more than man, where marble daemons watch/The Zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead men/Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,” (Abrams, 1993, p. 653, L. 109-20). The Byronic world is gloomy with city light and hypocrisy prevailed in that life. His streams do not flow, it remains stagnant. The poem,

Darkness reveals some sort of agonizing revelation of the deceptive society where Byron is living: “The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two/ Of an enormous city did survive,/ And they were enemies: they met beside/ The dying embers of an altar-place/ Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things/ For an unholy usage; they rak’d up,/ And shivering scrap’d with their cold skeleton hands (Abrams, 1993, p. 488, L. 55-61).

The diction imposed by the poet, Wordsworth, creates a soothing atmosphere and the readers may find themselves in tranquility surrounding sylvan pastoral environments free from hustle and bustle which is more likely to rusticity than urbanity.

## The Metrical Discordances

The most followed meter for the romantic poets is pentameter in the form of blank verses which was mostly adopted from Milton. But Wordsworth is irregular in the interpolation of these metrical patterns. The poetry of Wordsworth, whether it is serious or sublime in treatment, superimposes caesura in most of the cases at the inception of the stanzas which provokes a sense of call, address to the audience for deep attention to what the poet needs to say. The poem, *Nutting*, begins with “_________ It seems a day”, and then the poem retains pentameter all through its body as the second line may be taken for granted to evaluate the metrical ornamentation of the poet- “/I – Speak/ of – one/ from – ma/ ny- sin/ gled- out/”. Thus, the *Ruined Cottage: Second Part* and the
*Prelude: Second Part* amass with such type of one-line addition which does not help to complete the stanzas but emphasizes on the way of thought provocation in the audience who are provided with extra relief of cadence all through the stanzas of the poems. But one thing is notable here; the aforementioned sections of the poems do not begin with such typical arrangements at the very beginning stanzas and this arrangement cannot be found at the beginning of the poems. It, perhaps, guides the readers to the belief that a powerful feeling is overpowering the poet to create and the poet cannot but be gay abundant leaving behind all shackles of metrical restrictions. Likewise, *Intimation of Immortality* and *My heart leaps up* break the assonances of the same meter all through the poem which is tried in the *Prelude* and *Michael*. Even, the poet experimented with diametric and trimetric forms of poems that are interjected in the poem *Written in March*.

Thus, the poet tries to keep close to his poetic theory of 'powerful feelings' and tends to disavow the rigidity of aristocratic interplay of poems that was mostly tried by the neo-classical poets. This, freedom has also alienated the poet from his contemporaries as almost all the romantic poets tried to keep a regularity in the metrical functioning of the poems and if the discordance is violated by other poets, Shelly, for example, the phraseology and thoughts become so deep and higher it loses the perception of the Wordsworth as the language of men.

## Limitation and Delimitation of the Study

The stylistic features, though the features delineated here are deliberate choosing, of Wordsworth have been contextualized with the thought in mind that literary piece evolves through language in written forms and it highlights social inclusions of vernaculars or deliberate silencing of throats. Wordsworth has been justified with the thought of his effort of inclusion of speech of the men in society. Thus, the social perspective of language or sociolinguistics helps to construct the ideas and justify the poet. The concept of sociolinguistics is a twentieth-century phenomenon and Thomas Callan Hodson coined this phrase in 1939 to designate the social characteristics of language (Joseph, 2004). Thus, the interjection of linguistic theory in literary criticism claims novelty, thus retaining frailties. Little has been investigated in this blending. Again, all the literary pieces of Wordsworth are not covered here and there prevail scopes to defy the indicated concepts that this paper tries to prove. It is evident that the concept, sociolinguistics, was unknown to the poets in the romantic period. But, the proposition made by Wordsworth in the *Preface to the Lyrical Ballads* touches upon the idea of social liability of the literary pieces which this paper tends to grant as the guiding principle and this paved the way for sociolinguistics interpretation of Wordsworth.

## Implication of the Study

Language is a social factor and this concept is aiding the literary world with greater
effect. Thus, poetry construction has been
trying to bridge gaps between classical
distances and social inclusivity with new
trends of breaking the poetic norms. Free
verse is one of the efforts to expatiate the
concept of structural freedom. This study
inclines to justify that Wordsworth thought
of this liberation prior to the inception of
this revolution and thus made the poet
distinct among all other romantics. Thus, the
sociolinguistic perspective is a revelation to
analyze poetry in order to prove the
inclination of the poets to the society people
irrespective of regions and classes.

**Conclusion and Recommendation**

William Wordsworth exercised digressional
metrical forms, stanza construction,
conversational tone, little epigrammatic
phrases, and bombastic diction in his poetry.
His poetry is embedded only on the smooth

terrain of waters which can address more
readership among very common people of
rural settings. This made the poet distinct
and here lies the successful effort of social
inclusivity of the rural taste in the poetry. It
is claimed as an effort; not claimed as the
culmination of creating classless society
through the body of the poetry. Here,
Wordsworth walked alone in the romantic
period and this way is being followed by the
poets who think poetry has a social liability
and it cannot divide people and make a
community people unheard. Wordsworth
dreamed of unilateral society and he tried it
through the knitting of poetry that offered
him structural liberation from the
barrenness of poetic forms and functions
prior to his age. Thus, sociolinguistic theory
can be utilized not only in the linguistic
fields but also for the analysis of a literary
text if the social context needs to be justified
on the basis of its linguistic presentation.

**Works Cited**

Abrams, M.H (6th ed). (1993). *The Norton Anthology of English Literature, (vol. 2)*. New York: W.W. Norton and Company Inc.

Behler, E. (1968). *The Origins of the Romantic Literary Theory*. Colloquia Germanica, 2, 109-126. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/23979800

Classic Poetry Series. (2004). William Wordsworth: Poems. *Poemhunter.com—The World's Poetry Archive*. Retrieved from: https://www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/william_wordsworth_2004_9.pdf

Deniz, M. (2009). Importance of Language and Style in Romantic Poetry. *Discover Literature*, [BlogPost]. Retrieved from http://discoverliterature.blogspot.com/2013/05/importance-of-language-and-style-in.html

E. L. (May 7, 2019). How does Wordsworth Justify His low and rustic life in poetry? *EnglishLiterature.net*. Retrieved from https://englishliterature.net/notes/how-does-wordsworth-justify-his-low-and-rustic-life-in-poetry

Enlightenement and Romanticism Vocabulary List. (3rd March, 2020). Retrieved from
http://facweb.stagnes.org/home/pmcfarlin/html/EnlightRomant%20Vocab%20World.html

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**To cite this article**
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Sheikh Saifullah Ahmed, & Deb Proshad Halder. (2020). The Sociolinguistic Perspectives of the Stylistic Liberation of Wordsworth. *Sparkling International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research Studies, 3*(3), 1-13.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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**Sheikh Saifullah Ahmed** has been working as a full-time faculty member in the Department of English and Modern Languages under the College of Arts and Sciences (CAAS) at IUBAT-International University of Business Agriculture and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh since March 2020. Mr. Ahmed is a graduate in English from Khulna University, Bangladesh. He took part in a range of academic seminars, conferences, and workshops. His areas of interest include Qualitative Research, Literary Discourse Analysis, Major Literary, and Linguistic Theories, Shakespeare, Postcolonial Studies, Feminist Studies, Translation Studies, Cultural Studies, British and American Literature, Commonwealth Literature, South Asian Literature, Postmodern Literature.

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**Deb Proshad Halder** has been working as a lecturer in the Department of English at Jashore Govt. Women's College, Jashore, Bangladesh. Mr. Halder is a graduate in English from Khulna University, Bangladesh. He participated in a range of seminars, conferences, and workshops. His areas of interest include Romantic Literature, Wordsworth, Literary Devices, Qualitative Research, Discourse Analysis, Linguistic Theories, Postcolonial Studies, British and American Literature.

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