ABSTRACT Solidarity within social groups is a prominent thematic preoccupation in contemporary African literary works. Previous studies on Adichie’s three novels: Purple Hibiscus (PH), Half of a Yellow Sun (HOAYS) and AMERiCANAH (AH), have examined textual aspects such as language, context, style, and themes with little attention on discourse strategies as they evoke social solidarity in the novels. This study, therefore, examined discourse strategies in relation to how they evoked social ...
ABSTRACT This research explores the possibility of expressing and confronting trauma in the critical site of prison through the medium of poetry. Historically rooted in Holocaust studies, trauma has been conceptualized as a psychological wound that cannot be expressed nor healed through any media, least of all, literature. In response to the call of literary theorists for a theory of narrative that incorporates healing, Masterson et al. contend that the revelatory and therapeutic power of lit...
ABSTRACT The epic is quite familiar in literary study and criticism. Its Western as well as African variants well-known among scholars and students of literature all over the world. African versions of the epic such as Mwindo, Chaka and Sundiata give us some ideas about the African epic. But is there any such thing as the pan-African epic, and do Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons, Osiris Rising and KMT: in the house of life belong to this category? The choric characterization, the strong female ...
ABSTRACT It has been observed that some Ghanaians try to speak English with a foreign accent which they have locally acquired. This phenomenon, a Locally Acquired Foreign Accent (LAFA), is acknowledged to be gradually penetrating the English repertoire of some educated Ghanaians. The phenomenon is youth related. This lately acquired accent is observed to be developing due to the influence of some media institutions, especially the electronic media. This comes about through their entertainment...
ABSTRACT This study revisits the Trans-Atlantic slavery and analyses themes in slave resistance on the African continent, as fictionalized in Ghanaian literature. The topic, ‘A Vision of Self-Redemption: A Thematic Study of Resistance to Slavery in the Works of Two Contemporary Ghanaian Writers’, is chosen because resistance is one aspect of slavery which is downplayed in the literature. Whereas the records are eloquent on the atrocities and immorality of that evil institution, those on ...
ABSTRACT The study postulates three varieties of English perfomance in the writings of Nigerians, and examines these in detail for thier "common core" features and their "indexical markers".
ABSTRACT Duration, the length of time used in speech production, is a significant phonetic stress-related criterion for determining rhythm, which is crucial for intelligibility in Standard British English (SBE). Some phonological studies on Yoruba, Hausa and Isoko Englishes claimed that these sub-varieties of Nigerian English (NE) tilt towards syllable-timing due to the absence of vowel reduction. Nevertheless, existing phonological studies on Educated Edo English (EEE) – a sub-variety of ...
ABSTRACT The portrayal of women in fictional works is still a contentious ground. Women authors have often bemoaned the portrayal of women in male-authored novels. Various scholars (Chukukere 1995; Kolawole, 1997; Fonchingong, 2006; Ohale 2010) have all argued that male-authored novels do not indeed portray a realistic picture of the African woman. This study looks at the depiction of women by women authors. The study adopts the Negofeminism theory to analyse the protagonists in four woman ...
ABSTRACT The dislocation of individuals from homeland and attempts to belong in transnational spaces in contemporary times have become significant aspects of Nigerian migrant prose fiction. This prose fiction has gained prominence following the re-invention of the homeland irrespective of the migrant status of its writers. Studies of these writings have examined the novel genre and the reinvention of socio-political realities, with little attention to the short story genre and its concerns w...
ABSTRACT Connected speech processes (CSPs) account for sound modifications and simplifications in speech, while sociophonetics emphasises correlation between speech forms and social factors. Existing studies merely identified some CSPs that characterise Nigerian English (NE); studies that measure speakers' proximity to Standard British English (SBE) connected speech, especially in relation to social variation, are scarce. This study, therefore, investigated the incidence of assimilation, eli...
Abstract Studies on quasi-judicial public hearings have focused on rhetorical, sociolinguistic and critical discourse aspects of the hearings, but have not given attention to the discourse structure and participant goals during the hearings. Thus, this study examined language use and interaction in the 2008 quasi-judicial public hearing, conducted by a hearing panel constituted by the Senate on the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) administration in Nigeria. This was done with a view to reveal...
ABSTRACT Ethno-autobiographical poetry is a culturally constituted autobiographical poetry. Due to its subjectivity, it is regarded by critics as an unreliable construction of social history. Consequently, previous researches consider ethno-autobiographical poetry as essentially self-aggrandising, neglecting its form as a unique blend of both self and culture. Therefore, this study explored the cultural constitution of selected Nigerian migrant and travel literary ethno-autobiographical poet...
ABSTRACT The study aimed to present a genre analysis of the introduction sections of sports news presentation programmes (SNPP) on selected television stations in Ghana. Specifically, the study sought to account for the schematic structure (that is the various rhetorical units, the sequence of moves, the textual space of each move identified) and some lexico-grammatical resources that are dominant in the selected rhetorical unit that was analyzed. Three television stations (GTV, Metro TV & ...
ABSTRACT African American literature has been predominantly a male-preserve in the task of narrating the experience of slavery and its relics of denigration before the advent of reactionary literature by black female writers. Studies on female-authored African American literary works have concentrated on responding to male-authored representations of the tensions of racism, internal crisis of man-woman relationships and the challenges of empowering the black female character. Little attentio...
ABSTRACT In most Nigerian cultures, sex and sexuality are covertly expressed, but Contemporary Nigerian Hip-hop Artistes (CNHHAs) use different Escapist Discourse Strategies (EDSs) to create ambiguity and divert the attention of the Censor Board from the real sexual themes while negotiating socio-cultural restrictions in their music. Studies in the humanities and social sciences have attempted to discuss on how sex and sexuality are communicated in most Nigerian cultures. However, the (EDSs)...