Abstract
A TRIAL ON ANALYTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE VOCABULARY OF THE “İSTİKLAL MARŞI”
This is a stylistics study whose subject is the “İstiklal Marşı” which is the national anthem of the Republic of Turkey. It focuses on the vocabulary of the ten-stanza poem which constitutes the lyrics of the anthem. The lyrics of the poem were analyzed on three levels: type (categorical position), source (language it belongs to) and repetition. The words were assessed on these three levels based on their frequency of usage. This is how the word preferences of the poet were revealed, and the contributions of these preferences to the messages aimed to be provided by the poet were discussed.
The analyses based on types of words revealed that the noun “millet” (nation), tangible nouns about the universe and nature and abstract nouns about religious concepts were prevalent. The verbs had imperative mood and were used in the present tense. Negative verbs constituted about a third of these. These three factors may be interpreted as that the poet aimed to emphasize the general truth and warn the Turkish nation about certain issues.
The fact that the words used by Mehmet Âkif in the İstiklal Marşı were mostly of Turkish origin was in compliance with both the logic of national anthems and his attitude of using daily language that we know from the Safahat.
Moreover, fifteen different words or statements were repeated twice or sometimes thrice and made the presented massages more permanent through reinforcement.
Keywords
İstiklal Marşı, Mehmet Âkif, vocabulary, stylistics, poetry
