The literary text at the borders of linguistics and culture: A SF analysis of Les Murray's "Migratory"

This article is concerned with the relations between literary text and context, and with the enabling role of lexicogrammatical and structural features in establishing connections between the former and the latter. It shows how foregrounding together with aspects of texture and of interpersonal and experiential meanings in "Migratory" by Les Murray function as a bridge to relate Murray's poem to its cultural contexts of creation and interpretation. What on a superficial reading appears to be a poem about bird migration is shown to be about human migration in a way that challenges hegemonic views of this phenomenon. This paper argues that foregrounding in the poem takes the form of grammatical and lexical parallelism and deviation. These parallelisms and deviations structure the poem textually and experientially into identifiable parts, dealing with the theme of migration from two different perspectives: one focused on an external landscape and bird habitat, the other on a perceptive/ affective abstract sphere suggestive of human consciousness. The poet's lexico-grammatical choices link the poem to a political theme contemporary with its context of creation: the reclaiming by native australians of lands taken from their ancestors by British colonizers. The poem is thus seen to propose an alternative representation of the Australian landscape and its original inhabitants to traditional ones of colonial myth.