A Stylistico-Semantic Analysis Of Niyi Osundare’s The Word Is An Egg Knowledge Review, Volume 40 No. 1

Abstract

This study is stylistic analysis of Niyi Osundare’s The Word is an Egg. Previous studies on the anthology have mostly dwelt on how the text explores environmental issues. There is need to also appraise how various aspects of style are employed in the text in order to unveil their stylistic relevance to meaning construction. To this end, this study identifies style patterns as employed in the levels of linguistic description, as well as how these patterns accentuate political discourse. Guided by the Systemic Functional Grammar as its theoretical framework, the studyinvestigates how the resources of language are coordinated to effect communication. Eight (8) poems: “Invocations of the word”, “words catch fire”, “egg”, “divining words”, “can-do”, “the words which choose us”, “daughter of the word”, “words catch fire”, and “diplomatalk”, from Osundare’sThe Word is an Egg were purposively selected based on their embedded stylistic features, as data for the study. The study reveals that each of the linguistics choices has identifiable functions that are performed in the poem:at the syntactic level, neologisms are employed to satirize the disjointed Nigerian political structure;at the morphological level, neologisms are employed to satirize the Nigerian political space;at the semantic level, the poetuses connotations to point out a unified appraisal of the fragmented Nigerian political structure;at the phonological level, he uses repetitions to mimic and ridicule the hypocritical statements of the political holders. Lastly, at the graphological level, the uses a metaphor to illustrate the unstable Nigerian political system. It is therefore concluded that these linguistic elements contribute meaningfully to the overall message and the textual quality of the poems.