Dashes in Emily Dickinson's Selected Poems

Punctuation has a vital role in having a true interpretation of any  text. It is a linguistic form which is connected with stylistics. Stylistics probes the aesthetic spots which are created by linguistic methods to reveal the writer views. Dickinson uses dash as a tool  to add extra meaning  besides the word. Dash  is in need to be read and understood by the readers. Though dash creates a certain problem in the poem, it achieves various benefits of reflecting the sighs, emotion and loss  without writing words. 
This research analyzes dash as a punctuation mark, which appears widely in Dickinson's poetry.


1-INTRODUCTION
To have a full and accurate meaning of any written text, it is significant to have a full understanding of its punctuation which participates in giving a new meaning to a sentence. Thus, punctuation has a great connection with stylistics, which mediates between linguistics and literary criticism. Through dash, readers can also reveal the writer's emotion and hear the sighs, hesitation and loss. Poets sometimes fail to select the suitable words, thus they resort to use dash. Sometimes, dash adds artistic touches and it is considered as ''a musical device'' (Johnson 1960: x).
Style is considered as the writer's ''medium … language: whatever does, … he does it in and through language‖ ( Lodge1966: 4). The research presents new reading of Dickenson`s poem through tracing the new addition that the dashes add to her poems. It shows the hidden meaning that the dashes add to the general meaning of the poems. Punctuation is responsible of organizing the written text, and directing toward correct meaning.

2-EMILY DICKINSON'S LIFE
Emily Dickinson is a nineteenth century poet. She enriches English poetry with unique touches to such an extent that she is considered "the greatest woman poet in the English language" (Juhasz 1983:1). She suffered from loneliness. She did not see the actual world or even met any visitor. She made her own world and stricted belief in puritanism perhaps encouraged her isolation (Foester 52 1921:95). She saw life from an imaginative world. Few of her poems were published in her life whereas hundreds appeared after her death. In spite of being a poet of nineteenth century, she did not gain popularity until 1930s. She did not only select her unique world but also she selected a unique style in writing including new rhyme and meter, capitalization and punctuation. Though dash creates problem in getting the theme of the poem, it is turned to be her trademark in poetry. Her writing is a rich area of studying because readers find difficulties in getting the true meaning from her different ways of writing.
Others need to translate her new way in writing. She used punctuation to show her feeling and mirror her spirit: Her odd punctuation-heavy on dashes . . .to convey a complex states of mind and feeling. She employed these . . .not for their own seek, but for emotional and psychological impact. (Diyanni 2004: 650).

3-DATA ANALYSIS
Dickinson added new meanings by using punctuation in general and dash in particular. She used dash to show that poetic conventions fail to express her deep thoughts. Thus, by her new technique, she was considered to be a new school in poetry who was followed by many. According to Jahan (2003: 30), Emily Dickinson ''wrote poems that not only are excellent but establish a standard of excellence''. By her over use of dashes, she allows her readers to be vital sharers in hearing her sighs, breath and discovering her doubt and hesitance. Sometimes she uses the dash to prepare her reader to receive her appalling thought, making a pause and failing to find expressive words.

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In her poem The Soul that hath a Guest (Johnson 1960: 674)  She does not follow rule in the use of dash, instead she uses them to fill an empty space.

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In her poem A Tongue-to tell Him (Johnson 1960: 400) In her poem A Wife -at Daybreak I Shall be- (Johnson 1960: 222) Dickinson wants to widen the field of meaning by resorting to the dash that enable the words to be free from syntax. By the use of dash in this poem, she allows the readers to have wide meaning. The use of dash in this poem is to make a separation between the poet's personal thought and the familiar phrases: she forces her patient reader to read these dashes to complete the theme that she cuts by dash. Thus, using dash makes her poem having different ends depending on the readers minds, Sometimes her dashes are read from the context to have a single meaning, using this technique in writing does not distort her writing as some claim and blame her but it distinguishes her and makes her leave an everlasting stamp on poetry. Her dashes are read as words not marks which are exploited to support the theme, structure and musicality. Her insistence to keep on using dash reveals her faith in its importance as a veil to hide the conveyance many of her feelings.

CONCLUSION
Dickenson is known primarily for her mastery of the use of punctuation and in particular the dash in her poems. In some of her poems, she cannot find words to express her over emotionality; thus, she exploits dash in her poem The Soul that hath a Guest to express her deep emotion for her dearest friend to such an extent that she finds no words to express this rather than using dashes. She does not follow the rules of using the dash. In her poem A Tongueto tell Him, middles dash can be read as a sign besides its function as a dividing of thought and in the same poem the dash can be read as a sigh that shows her deep emotion.
The middle dash is used in other poems like A Tongue-to tell Him to refer to the shifting of ideas. Sometimes, dash reflects her embarrassment of revealing emotion. Dash reflects pauses that shows her horror of the closing of death in I Heard a Fly Buzz -When I Died, at the same poem, end dash is used instead of full stop to show the endlessness of her poem which endears various suggestions. Dash is a good way that helps to understand the mood of the poet and it can be a tool to reveal additional meaning without using words.