-
A Lexico-sematic Analysis Of Olu Obafemi’s Naira Has No Gender
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 3]
Page 2 of 3
-
-
-
1.2 THE USE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN NIGERIAN LITERATURE
There
seems to be a proliferation of Nigerian literary works in the English
language throughout the country, and it is observed that the country has
the greatest output of literature in Africa in English Language,
(http://www.onlinenigeria.com/Nigerianliterature/). Some of these works
were originally written in the indigenous languages such as Fagunwa’s
Igbo Olodumare translated by Ajadi (1984, 1995) as the Forest of God.
From
the wake of the struggle, for independence in the 1950s, writers such
as Achebe had written literary pieces to orchestrate the voice of the
Nigerians against colonialism. These writers also extended their
struggles against social, political and cultural maladjustments to the
Present-post-colonial periods when independence had been achieved. For
instance Soyinka’s The Man Died, and Kongi’s Harvest Achebe’s A Man of
the People, and Anthills of the Savanah, and Amadu’s Sunset in Biafra,
are important literary works of Nigerian. It could be said that the
Nigerian Literature in English is the one which attracts greater
attention and have the greater influence nationally and internationallyâ€
(http://www.onlinenigeria.com/Nigerianliterature/). This is probably
due to the fact that English language has gained a wide currency nation
wide and internationally.
The Drama, one of the three genres of
literature, is a medium through which the Nigerian socio-political and
cultural realities are mediated by using English language in particular.
But this English seems to have maintained a middle course by trying to
balance the equation between Nigerian socio-cultural contexts and the
foreign tongue (English). This is expressly visible in the words of
Achebe (1975) cited by Adedimeji, 2007 p.166) “The English language will
be able to carry the weight of my African experiences. But it will have
to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home
but altered to suit its new Africa environment.†This seems to be the
place of English language in Nigerian literature.
1.3 THE PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The
purpose of the study is aimed at investigating Naira Has No Gender by
Olu Obafemi using Lexico-semantic variation as our theoretical
construct. It is presumed that the text has within it traces of
Nigerianism which we shall attempt to bring to the limelight.
The
study is as well premised on the need to explicate these Nigerianism
vis-Ã -vis their functional uses in socio-political and cultural contexts
where they are applied.
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
Much
work had been done in the analysis of many Nigerian literary works using
different theoretical frame works. This work, it is hoped, shall
advance the scholarship in lexico-semantic variation in Nigerian
literary works.
Beneficiaries of this study include students at the
secondary School and undergraduates levels. Readers from other
disciplines can as well benefit from the study as it will intimate them
with such usages as Nigerianisms which are used in literary texts, with
Naira Has No Gender being a case study.
1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
Texts
(literary texts inclusive) can be x-rayed through different layers of
linguistic analysis such as morphology, syntax, pragmatics etc. However,
due to time and space constraints and for a thorough analysis, we have
restricted ourselves in this study to the lexico-semantic variation
specifically the five typologies of Adegbija (1989). Another underlying
reason for this restriction is that Lexico semantic variation best
explains the socio-cultural aspects inherent in texts, literary texts in
this case. The whole play will be studied with a view to identifying
and classifying its lexico-semantic patterns.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 3]
Page 2 of 3
-
-
ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This work focuses on the Lexico-semantic variation of the Nigerian English using Olu Obafemi’s text Naira Has No Gender. The aim of this work is to highlight meaning change according to context and environment. Element of Lexico-semantic variation in Nigerian English which are Transfer, Analogy, Acronyms, Semantic Shift and Extension and Coinages or Neologism identified by Adegbija (1989) are used to analyse data collected from Olu Obafemi’s Naira Has No Gender. In this analysis we ... Continue reading---
