Rudyard Kipling: An Analysis Of If

Introduction
Using methodology from the linguistic and literary areas of study, this essay looks to examine the poem ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling. It aims to analyse the thematic features of the poem to get a grasp of the actual meaning of it, and, to some extent, look at the historical context of what is written. Additionally, this essay looks to determine how and which categories of speech acts this poem fits into, and also what effect that has on this particular text.

A few words about ‘If’
The poem ‘If’ was composed by the late Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865-January 18, 1935), a British writer, poet, author and journalist. Written in 1909 and published the following year, ‘If’ was possibly the most famed poem by Kipling.
The poem is a didactic poem, and is in essence about a boy given fatherly advice on how to be a man. It is made up by four stanzas of “if you do this and refrain from doing this” that, collectively, are tools to becoming a man. It consists of 4 stanzas, each of with consisting of 8 verses.

Course tools
For part 1, the analysis is based on the studies of felicity conditions and Searle’s classes of speech act. These areas of study fall under the area of pragmatics which is the study of how humans use language to communicate with each other. I have chosen to apply methodology from this area to the poem as the poem is seemingly constructed to resemble a verbal interaction between man and son.
For part 2 of the course, I have chosen to analyse the themes of