STYLISTICS ANALYSIS OF THE POEM “FRIENDSHIP” BY VENER SANTOS

Jessica G. Perbin
Bachelor in Secondary Education Major in English
University of Cagayan Valley, Tuguegarao City, Philippines
jessicagllrm@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
This study aims to dissect the stylistic features of the poem “Friendship” written by
Vener Santos, a Filipino author. This study focuses on the four (4) aspects which are phonology,
graphology, morphology, and lexico-syntax to be deeply analyzed in order to determine the style
used by the poet who wrote the literary piece. Moreover, this research is helpful in understanding
the basic concepts, literal and hidden meanings of the poem.
KEYWORDS: phonological level, graphological level, morphological level, lexico-syntax level,
style and stylistics.

I. INTRODUCTION
Style is an art used by an artist in a particular masterpiece. It is a distinctive form of a
masterpiece utilized by an artist in conformity with the theme of an art. It is the
particular variety of language used by different individuals and/or in different situations or
settings. Meanwhile, stylistics is a branch of applied linguistics, the study and interpretation of
texts in regard to their linguistic and tonal style. It is a discipline that connects literary criticism
to linguistics. Having said that, it is then understandable that stylistics on its own cannot stand
alone. It is applied to an understanding of literature and journalism as well as linguistics.
Stylistics as a conceptual discipline may attempt to establish principles capable of explaining
particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language, such as in the
literary production and reception of genre, the study of folk art, in the study of
spoken dialects and registers, and can be applied to areas such as discourse analysis as well as
literary criticism.
In stylistics, there are four (4) aspects to be studied. First, is the phonological level. It is
considered as the level where speech sounds can be determined. The phonological analysis
focuses on analyzing sound patterns, utterance of different words and forming systemic use of
sound in a language in order to know about the meaning, ideas, focuses and idiosyncratic
behaviors in a text. Rhyme schemes, end rhymes, assonance, alliteration, cacophony and
euphony are just few of its components.

Another aspect is the graphological level determines the orthographic features used by
the author. It is under this level where the author gives emphasis to the masterpiece written by
him. It can also be determined in this level the punctuation marks being used that signify the
pacing the author wants on how to read the literary masterpiece. Leech (1969) believes that
graphology transcends orthography. “It refers to the whole writing system: punctuation and
paragraphing as well as spacing. Morphological level is another level to be analyzed, it is the
level where the formations of words are being determined. It also gives stress on how words are
being used as tools in the formation of a literary piece.

Morphological level of analysis is concerned with word formation processes subjected to

specific conditions and rules of the processes of affixation – the prefix, the suffix and the root
words, coining, back formation, etc.

Lastly, we have lexico-syntax level wherein it is the level where words are put together to
form a harmonious orderly system of sentence in a literary piece. Lexico-syntactic choices are
obtained through devices such as piling of usual and unusual collocates, archaic words, particular
parts of speech and figures of speech like metaphor, simile, oxymoron, etc.

Introduction of the Poet

Vener Santos was born on May 16, 1967 and he is from Saint Joseph. He went to Macon
College from 1985 to 1989. At T-Mobile, Blockbuster, Inc., he became a yodeler, in which the
nature of his work is to sing involving repeated and rapid changes of pitch, from low to high tone
or vice-versa.

Introduction to the Poem

His poem “Friendship” is not just an ordinary poem about having a friend. This poem
talks about Filipinos, in particular. Vener Santos made this poem to all Filipinos to understand
what friendship is all about and what friendship brings to our lives.

Filipinos are very friendly in nature. We treasure those people who are nice and true to us
and make us feel that we are family, a family that will help each other. Friendship unites the
Filipinos. In unity they make things possible. A friend is the one who will support and comfort
you in times of weakness and happiness.

II. ANALYSIS OF THE POEM

On Phonological Level

End Rhyme

And things will grow old. (Line 2)

Friends will grow old (Line 7)
 But friendship will never. (Line 8)
It will remain young forever. (Line 10)

The poem has irregular end rhymes. It is evident that the author doesn’t focus much on
rhyming words when creating a poem. The only rhymes seen were lines 2 and 7 having the same
word “old” and lines 8 and 10, having the words “never” and “forever’. Some poets find this
liberating and whimsically change your mind.

Assonance

And things will grow old. (Line 2)

All of the year it will remain fresh. (Line 6)
But friendship will never. (Line 8)
Death will separate it on earth, (Line 11)
But it will reborn in Heaven. (Line 12)

Assonance is the repetition of the vowel sounds in a line as seen in lines 2, 6, 8, 11 and
12. In line 2 and line 6, the sound of “i” was repeated twice for both lines. The same is through
with the sound of “o” in line 2. Lines 8, 11 and 12 has the repetition of the sound “e” thrice.

Consonance

Days will pass (Line 1)

And things will grow old. (Line 2)
All of the year it will remain fresh. (Line 6)
Death will separate it on earth (Line 11)
But it will reborn in Heaven. (Line 12)

In line 1, the sound of “s” from the words ‘days’ and ‘pass’ was repeated twice. The same
thing goes with line 2, the sound of “d” was repeated two times from the words ‘and’ and ‘old’.
In line 6, we can also observe the repetition of the “l” sound from the words ‘all’ and ‘will’.

In line 11, the sound of soft “th” was emphasized, and it was seen in ‘death’ and ‘earth’.
Lastly, in line 12, two sounds were repeated and these are the sounds of “t” of the words ‘but’
and ‘it’, and “n” which can be clearly seen in the words ‘reborn’, ‘in’ and ‘heaven’.

The use of this device makes the structure of poetry appealing for the reader.
Repetition

Days will pass (Line 1)

And things will grow old. (Line 2)
Flowers will bloom (Line 3)
And soon will decay. (Line 4)
All of the year it will remain fresh. (Line 6)
Friends will grow old (Line 7)
But friendship will never. (Line 8)
It will remain young forever. (Line 10)
Death will separate it on earth (Line 11)
But it will reborn in Heaven. (Line 12)

And things will grow old. (Line 2)

And soon will decay. (Line 4)

But when friendship starts (Line 5)

But friendship will never. (Line 8)

All of the year it will remain fresh. (Line 6)

It will remain young forever. (Line 10)

As I can observe, the word “will” was repeated in almost every line of the poem except
for lines 5 and 9. The words “and” from lines 2 and 4, “friendship” from line 5 and 8, and
“remain” from lines 6 and 10 were all repeated twice respectively. On this note, the author is
fond of using the same words he mentioned already, which indicates to further emphasize
something.

Silent Phonemes

But when friendship starts (Line 5)

As long as we both care (Line 9)

Silent phonemes are evident in lines 5 and 9 wherein line 5 contains the word “when” and
when you pronounce it, the h becomes silent. Same thing goes with the word “care” in line 9 that
when you pronounce it, the “e” won’t be enunciated anymore.

Cacophony

But when friendship starts (Line 5)

 The only word that has a cacophonic effect is the word “friendship” in line 5 because of
the combination of the letters d, p and sh that when you read is very unpleasant to the ears.

Euphony

Days will pass,

And things will grow old.
Flowers will bloom,
And soon will decay.
But when friendship starts,
All of the year it will remain fresh.

Friends will grow old,

But friendship will never.
As long as we both care,
It will remain young forever.
Death will separate it on earth,
But it will reborn in Heaven.

The author used a lot of words that have a euphonic effect in the sense that almost all of
the words have this special combination of the sounds of l, m, n, r, y, f, v, s, w, soft th and wh that
when you read the whole poem, it has this pleasant effect.

On Graphological Level

Capitalization

All of the first words in each line were capitalized such as Days, And, Flowers, But, All,
Friends, As, It, and Death.

Death will separate it on earth, (Line 11)

But it will reborn in Heaven (Line 12)

The author capitalized Death as well as Heaven as if to connote these as proper nouns.
Death was referred to as a living person that is why the author capitalized it, because it has the
power of separating friendship from Earth.

The author also did not capitalize Earth, it should be wrong because Earth is the name of
the planet we are living in. Therefore, it is a proper noun and should be capitalized.
 Other than the word “Heaven”, no other words in the middle of each line of the poem
bears a capital letter.

Punctuation Marks

These marks serve as signals for a reader. They are used as indicators in pausing and showing an
emphasis to the written piece.

Periods are called end marks. In the poem, the writer used six (6) periods. These periods are
found in lines 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. This means that the author wanted to have a full stop in
every two lines.

And things will grow old. (Line 2)

And soon will decay. (Line 4)
All of the year it will remain fresh. (Line 6)

But friendship will never. (Line 8)

It will remain young forever. (Line 10)
But it will reborn in Heaven. (Line 12)

Commas are also present in the poem. Santos also used six (6) commas all in all and
these are present in lines 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11. As much as the author wanted a full stop in every
two lines, he also wanted to have a slight break in the line before proceeding to the line with a
period.

Days will pass, (Line 1)

Flowers will bloom, (Line 3)
But when friendship starts, (Line 5)

Friends will grow old, (Line 7)

As long as we both care, (Line 9)
Death will separate it on earth, (Line 11)

Spacing

Days will pass,

And things will grow old.
Flowers will bloom,
And soon will decay.
But when friendship starts,
 All of the year it will remain fresh.

Friends will grow old,

But friendship will never.
As long as we both care,
It will remain young forever.
Death will separate it on earth,
But it will reborn in Heaven.

As observed, there is a single space used to separate the poem into two stanzas, having 6
lines in each stanza.

On Morphological Level

Derivational Morphemes

But when friendship starts, (Line 5)

But friendship will never. (Line 8)
But it will reborn in Heaven. (Line 12)

As I can observe, the only words in the poem that has a derivational morpheme are the
words “friendship” in lines 5 and 8 and “reborn” in line 12, wherein a suffix -ship was added to
friend and a prefix re- was added in born, therefore changing its entire meaning.

Inflectional Morphemes

Days will pass (Line 1)

And things will grow old. (Line 2)
Flowers will bloom (Line 3)
But when friendship starts (Line 5)
Friends will grow old (Line 7)

The above lines contain an inflectional morpheme –s. Day in line 1, thing in line 2,
flower in line 3, and friend in line 7 were added an –s to indicate plurality. Moreover, the word
“start” in line 5 was added –s to emphasize the present tense present in the literary piece.

Compounding

It will remain young forever. (Line 10)

The line above contains a compound word which is “forever”, the combination of for and ever.

On Lexico-Syntax Level

Parts of Speech

Noun Pronoun Verb Adjective Adverb Preposition Conjunction

days it will the old of and

things all pass fresh soon on but
flowers we grow young when in
friendship both bloom long never
year decay forever
friends starts as
Death remain
earth care
Heaven separate
reborn
The table above shows the distribution of words into the seven parts of speech namely
noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition and conjunction. There is no word in the
poem which is considered as an interjection. So, the author only used the seven parts of speech.

Figures of Speech

Personification

Death will separate it on earth (Line 11)

In the line above, death, an abstract noun, was attributed the quality of a person which is
to separate friendship from Earth.

III. FINDINGS

On phonological level, Santos used end rhymes but not evident all throughout the poem.
He also used other sound devices such as alliteration, assonance, consonance, repetition,
cacophony and euphony. Meanwhile, on graphological level, he capitalized all the initial letters
of each line, but aside from that, he also capitalized Heaven, but not Earth which is supposed to
be capitalized. He also utilized six periods and six commas on his poem. Vener also made use of
derivational and inflectional morphemes and compound words which falls under morphological
level. On lexico-syntax level, he just used one figure of speech in his poem which is
personification and he was not fond of placing interjections in his poem.

IV. CONCLUSION

In the first look, the poem seemed so simple, especially on the author’s diction and the
formulation of his lines. But as I delved deeper, there’s much more to the simplicity that was
presented. I also observed that the author does not use much figures of speech in his poems, so
the readers can comprehend this well in their first reading.

V. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This study would not be a success without the help of the people who constantly gave
their help in checking and revising this piece of work. The researcher would like to especially
thank Dr. Jomel B. Manuel for his endless patience and guidance for her to finish this study and
for his research Stylistics Analysis on Poem “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer which served as a guide
for her in finishing this.

VI. REFERENCES

Leech, G., A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry (1969) Retrieved From

https://epdf.tips/a-linguistic-guide-to-english-poetry.html

Manuel, J., Stylistics Analysis on Poem “Trees” Joyce Kilmer (2017) Retrieved From
http://www.ijsrp.org/research-paper-1117.php?rp=P716984

http://cj0731.blogspot.com/2016/05/filipino-poets-and-their-poems.html
http://shannenbeceril.blogspot.com/
 VII. APPENDIX

Friendship
Vener Santos

Days will pass,

And things will grow old.
Flowers will bloom,
And soon will decay.
But when friendship starts,
All of the year it will remain fresh.

Friends will grow old,

But friendship will never.
As long as we both care,
It will remain young forever.
Death will separate it on earth,
But it will reborn in Heaven.

About the Author

Jessica G. Perbin is a student of the University Cagayan Valley taking Bachelor in

Secondary Education, major in English. Currently, she is now in his final year as a student. She
is from Peñablanca, Cagayan.

She is currently acquainted with different school organizations and one of which is the
TEACH (Teacher Education: Advocates for Change and Hope), and she is the vice president.