COMPARATIVE STUDY ON HOW AMERICAN WHITE & BLACK POETS SEE BLACK PEOPLE: A SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF POETRY

Abstract

This research aims to compare the significance in the 21st century through Langston Hughes‟ and Maya Angelou‟s selected poems. In this research, I took two selected poems of Langston Hughes and two selected poems of Maya Angelou which focusses on Racism‟s issue. Therefore, this research uses Michael Riffaterre‟s Semiotics of poetry theory to find out the meaning and significance of the chosen poems. This research uses some opinions and history as a hypogram to portrait the ideal women in the 21st century. This research is conducted by applying a qualitative method and the data are in the form of word, phrase, sentence, or line and stanza. The data are divided into primary and secondary data. This research focuses on the two main problems. The first is the racism perspective comparison represented in the selected poems by Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou. The result of this research shows that the significance of Langston Hughes‟s and Maya Angelou‟s poems focuses on racism perspectives to black people.