The ‘Ands’ and ‘Buts’ in Kahlil Gibran’s English Works: A Corpus Stylistics Perspective

Abstract

The sentence-initial coordinating conjunctions (and, but), referred to in the literature as SIA and SIB, have been well established as discourse markers beyond their syntactic function as connectors of related propositions. In reference to the proof-editing process of The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran’s most internationally acclaimed work in English, records show that Gibran tends to “overuse” “Ands” and “Buts”. In this context, this study traces Gibran’s use of sentence-initial coordinating conjunctions (and, but) in The Prophet and his seven other works in English, attempting to determine whether his use of SIA and SIB can be stylistically characterized. In this context, this study adopts a corpus stylistics approach to look into the frequency of SIA and SIB across Gibran’s English works. The findings of this study reveal that Gibran’s frequent use of SIA and SIB is statistically “meaningful” and his use of SIA and SIB is a “conscious” act of discourse marking, similar in nature to their “unique” use in King James Bible and William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Gibran’s most influential and inspirational literary sources). In addition, the collocational networks for both SIA and SIB display that Gibran depends heavily on the coordinating conjunction (and) to verbalize his arguments and points of view, shifting his prose-poetry as close as possible to “orality”—a biblical stylistic feature par excellence