The Sustainability of Teaching Personification in Language Education: A Qualitative Analysis Using Kwang-Chung Yu’s Free Verse

Hsin-Chi Ko
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Hsin-Chi Ko: Department of Mass Communication and Language Education Centre, Chang Jung Christian University, Tainan City 71101, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 10, 1-23

Abstract: Many scholars consider Kwang-Chung Yu (1928–2017) a prominent practitioner of free verse. The poetic quality of his work shows considerable ingenuity, and a key feature is his use of personification to create a humorous style. Collection of Humorous Free Verses by Kwang-Chung Yu contains the most representative examples of his work. As there are no existing studies on how Yu’s personification technique could be used for language education, the present study takes a qualitative approach to explore this topic. Of the verses featured in the collection, 88% of them use personification, and 102 personified themes were found overall. The discussion consists of four parts that serve as references for language education: (1) an analysis of examples representing the six categories of personified themes, (2) eight major reflection shortcuts for personification; (3) the association and application of eight types of situations for personification; and (4) a review of an online questionnaire and its positive results. The concluding section summarises Yu’s use of personification and presents a comprehensive model of personification for language education based on a pragmatic analysis. This model is a study of a master poet and is sure to be of interest to anyone who wants to know how personification techniques are crafted.

Keywords: pragmatic analysis; language education; personification; free verse; Kwang-Chung Yu; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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