Semiotic Reading of Mari Evans’ “I Am a Black Woman throughThrough Thick Description

The precedence of poetry can be traced to ancient times when man first realized that he could combine speech with rhythmicity and musicality to convey his inner-most thoughts and passions expressively. The strengths and advantages attributed to poetry are galore ; however, few think of employing it as a source for retrieving cultural facts. In the present study, the endeavor of the researcher is to display how poetry can be utilized to extract cultural concepts which are embedded in the mass cultural consciousness of a people by scrutinizing their poetry. The complexity of notions, expressed through poetry, can be revealed once verses are deconstructed and the poem is perused scholarly to single out hypograms which are the units carrying the essence of meaning. The inevitable result would be the revelation of different layers of meaning which are convoluted into leitmotifs and only a thorough analysis and meticulous reading can exhibit the relationship between the signs, signifier and the signified. As both poetry and cultural studies share the characteristic of being implicit, it is necessary to employ methods which aid clarity and lucidity. A sophisticated analysis requires the use of thick description, the method which cleaves the kernels of thought to display intended meaning and acts as a viable catalyst expediting the process of comprehension through interpretation.