A Study on Deviations in the Poem 'Reported Missing'

Abstract

In literary stylistics, "deviation" is a crucial technique in poetic creation, where breaking linguistic norms can produce a foregrounding effect, thereby highlighting a poem's theme. Barry Cole's "Reported Missing" is a narrative poem abundant with deviations. It tells the story of an unsuccessful dialogue between a police officer and a man searching for his missing lover. Since the language used by the two men is disparate, their conversation ends in vain. The woman remains missing as a result of their communication breakdown. This paper aims to uncover the sources of the failure by examining the deviations in this unsuccessful dialogue, including deviation in the domain, deviation in the medium of transmission, and deviation in the tenor of discourse. These linguistic deviations represent the dramatic conflicts between the objective and subjective world, sparking reflection on the subjective beauty of one's emotions and the harsh objective reality.