CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study
Style is got from the Latin word “Stilus” which means “a pointed instrument for writing on waxed tablets and has, in modern times, been associated with a way or manner of writing or speaking” (Otagburuagu et al 35). Style has also been defined as the description and analysis of the variability forms of linguistic items in actual language use. It is the manner or mode of expressing one’s thought in language. Language is a medium of communication of ideas or feelings via conventional signs, sounds, or marks with distinguishable denotations and connotations (Eme, & Mbagwu, 2011) Hall maintains that language is the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral- auditory symbols.
A creative artist expresses his feeling, thought, ideas and vision through language and his unique way of using language to convey his feelings is what is called style (E.J. Otagburuagu et al 2014:35). Leech and Michael in E.J. Otagburuagu et al 2014 define style as “the linguistic characteristics of a particular text”. According to Otagburuagu et al, Katie in her book, A Dictionary of Stylistics (1989) classifies style into the following: style as personal idiosyncrasy, style as a technique of expression and style as the highest achievement of literature.
An author’s writing style is not incidental, superficial, or supplementary: style identifies how ideas are embodied in language. In other words, the effect of how an author uses words and literary elements is important for understanding the meaning of a text.
An author’s writing style includes all of the items on the list below, including specific word choice (diction), kind of tone, use of formal or informal language, etc.
The author adopts a variety of style elements depending on his or her purpose, audience, and genre. Analyzing an author's style involves understanding the particular way a text is written. Style in writing is not what is said but how it is said. Analyzing an author's style involves analyzing the writer's unique way of communicating ideas. Styles in writing are created deliberately by the author to convey a specific mood or effect.
Style is often aligned with pathos, since its figures of speech are often employed to persuade through emotional appeals. However, style has just as much to do with ethos, for an author’s style often establishes or mitigates one's authority and credibility. But it should not be assumed, either, that style simply adds on a pathetic or ethical appeal to the core, logical content. Style is very much part of the appeal through logos (appeal to logic and reason), especially considering the fact that schemes of repetition (e.g. outlines) serve to produce coherence and clarity, which are attributes of the appeal to reason. In other words, most pieces of writing have all three appeals (pathos, ethos, logos), but one or the other may be more dominate depending on the purpose of the piece of writing.
- Biography of Chris Abani's
Chris Abani was born on 27 December 1966 in Afikpo, Nigeria, to an English mother, Daphne, and a Nigerian Igbo father, Michael. In 1968, young Chris, his mother and four siblings fled Nigeria to escape the Biafran War (1967-1970). They lived in England for three years, and subsequently returned to their home country, where Michael had stayed behind to work as a Red Cross official. Chris Abani would later recreate this important episode of his family history in Daphne's Lot (2003), an epic poem retracing his mother's life and also evoking, among other things, his troubled relationship with his violent father.
Abani started writing stories when he was six, had his first piece of short fiction published when he was ten, and wrote his first novel, a thriller entitled Masters of the Board (1984), at the age of sixteen. Because the narrative recounts the attempt of an ex-Nazi officer to seize power in Nigeria, the country's real-life authorities accused Abani of providing the blueprint for a failed coup against the Babangida regime in late 1985 – an absurd claim devised after the purported leader of the conspiracy, General Vatsa, was found in possession of the book (‘A Reading by Chris Abani'). Following these allegations, the writer was sent to prison, where he spent a total of six months (‘Author's Note', Kalakuta Republic, 9).
As Abani reports (‘Chris Abani: Interview', Creativity in Exile), the publication of his second novel, Sirocco (1987), again elicited a violent reaction from the authorities. They destroyed all copies of the book, closed down the publishing house that had issued it and arrested the writer once again, holding him for a year at Kiri Kiri maximum security prison in Lagos. Upon his release, Abani resumed the literary studies that he had started at Imo State University, Owerri, but he did not cease to voice his dissent against Nigeria's military rulers. In 1990, the staging of his play Song of a Broken Flute, which challenged the regime's position on human rights, once more led to the author's arrest and incarceration. This time, he was sentenced to death without trial. He spent another year and a half at Kiri Kiri, among which six months in solitary confinement, and was eventually released thanks to his friends' financial intervention (‘Author's Note', Kalakuta Republic, 9; ‘Chris Abani: Interview', Creativity in Exile). He left for London shortly afterwards and, in 1999, fearing for his life, he moved to Los Angeles, where he still resides.
Chris Abani's Kalakuta RepublicAbani's memories of his experiences in prison constitute the focus of his first collection of poetry, Kalakuta Republic (2000), which depicts events of extreme violence and provides haunting reflections on human nature, survival, dignity and redemption. In this regard, the volume anticipates some of the most prominent themes running through the writer's later work, including his novel GraceLand (2004), which features sixteen-year-old Elvis Oke, an Elvis Presley impersonator who tries to eke a living in Lagos. The narrative, often described as a Bildungsroman, alternates between the protagonist's past and present, and portrays his ambiguous sexuality and the moral choices that he repeatedly faces in the violent environment of Nigeria's largest city. Another of the novel's major topics is gender, a subject also at the heart of Dog Woman (2004), a series of poems inspired by a sequence of paintings by Spanish artist Paula Rego, and of Becoming Abigail (2006), a poignant novella featuring a teenager obsessed by her dead mother. Abigail, the fourteen-year-old protagonist of the narrative, is forced to move from Nigeria to London, where she is subjected to severe sexual, physical and psychological mistreatment at the hands of her cousin Peter. While the novella fiercely denounces men's exploitation of women, it can also be read as a highly ambiguous story of female empowerment, a complexity epitomized by the main character's violent rebellion against her aggressor, and by her final act of self-annihilation.
Chris Abani's Song for NightOnly months after the release of Becoming Abigail, Abani published the collection of poetry Hands Washing Water (2006), which contains several pieces that assert the fundamental oneness of human experience. The long epistolary poem ‘Buffalo Women' (31-50), in particular, tackles issues of gender and race, but also covertly addresses mankind's universal propensity for violence. The latter theme is further explored in Song for Night (2007), a novella set during the final days of the Biafran War. Its narrator, a child soldier called My Luck, has both suffered terrible atrocities and committed horrific crimes, some of which he enjoyed perpetrating. While the book is violent and disturbing, it also gestures towards the possibility of redemption, as suggested by its surprising ending.
Radically different in tone, yet equally subtle in its exploration of psychological wounds, is The Virgin of Flames (2007). The novel follows the meandering soul-searching of Black, a mural artist of Salvadoran and Nigerian descent who regularly dresses as the Virgin Mary, allegedly to serve as a model for his own artistic project. The novel, set in Los Angeles, probes the complex relationship between art, religion and sexuality.
After The Virgin of Flames, Abani once again returned to poetry with the collection Sanctificum (2010). The book, which draws mainly on the Catholic, Igbo, Yoruba and Buddhist spiritual traditions, is notable for its formal inventiveness and for the fresh perspectives that it offers on some of the recurring themes in Abani's work, including religion, masculinity and war. Shortly after Sanctificum, the writer published two more volumes of poetry: a collection entitled There Are No Names for Red (2010), which puts side by side thirty poems and their source of inspiration, a series of paintings by African American writer and artist Percival Everett; further, the Nigerian author released a compilation of long poems, Feed Me the Sun (2010), which features selected pieces from all his books of poetry from Daphne's Lot onwards.
Chris Abani's GraceLandAbani's rich and provocative works have earned him many literary distinctions, including prestigious awards such as the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (2005, for GraceLand) and the PEN/Beyond Margins Award (2008, for Song for Night), and several notable fellowships, among which the Lannan Literary Fellowship (2003) and the Guggenheim Fellowship (2009). In addition to his occupation as a writer, Abani works in academia. He used to be a Professor in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, and is now Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University in Illinois. Finally, he is also active in the publishing industry, as the founding editor of the Black Goat independent poetry series, an imprint of Akashic Books whose title humorously refers to its creator's complexion, astrological star sign and self-avowed stubbornness
1.1.2 Biography of Festus Iyayi
Festus Iyayi was born in Ugbegun in the year 1947 in Esanland, died 12 November 2013) was a Nigerian writer known for his radical and sometimes tough stance on social and political issues. Iyayi employed a realistic style of writing, depicting the social, political and moral environment and system both the rich and poor live and work in. he was also a former president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASSU). He died in a ghastly motor accident caused by a reckless convoy of Kogi State. Governor Idris Wada while on his way to Kano State to attain an ASSU (Academic Staff Union of Universities) NEC meeting concerning a four-month strike embarked upon by the union. Iyayi was a member of different Nigerian literary organization and worked in the private sector as a consultant
1.2 Statement of the Problem
From observation , it is clear that Festus Iyayi's Violence And Chris Abani's Becoming Abigail has received little attention from scholars and nothing has been done to make a research on the language and style hence this study.
1.3 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The main thrust of this study is to investigate the Comparative Analysis Of Style And Language In Festus Iyayi's Violence And Chris Abani's Becoming Abigail.
The following are the specific objectives;
- To investigate the author’s use of language in these novels.
- To investigate style as pertaining to the authors writing
- To draw useful conclusion based on the study texts.
1.4 Limitations of the Study
Financial Constraints: The researcher was with limited funds, she cannot visit all the areas to get responses from respondents but she was able to get good information concerning the research topic.
Time Constraints: The researcher was involved in other departmental activities like seminars, attendance of lectures et.c which limited her time for the research but the researcher was able to meet up with the time assigned for the completion of the research work.
1.5 Scope and Delimitations of the study
There are many fictional writers in Africa, who have written against gender inequality, but this study is limited to two selected novels, which are set in Africa. Only fiction written in English is considered, as fictional works written in other languages fall out of the scope of this study. The two novels selected are Festus Iyayi's Violence And Chris Abani's Becoming Abigail
1.6 Significance of the study
This study is significant in several ways; first, it is expected to contribute to the growing interest on the interface between language and literature. Secondly, the study contributes to scholarship on Festus Iyayi's Violence And Chris Abani's Becoming Abigail The study will equally add to the existing body of knowledge on the subject matter. Students undergoing research work similar to the present study who may wish to use this work as a reference material or a spring board for their own work will find this work really useful.
1.7 Methodology
Creswell (1994) defines the research methodology as the system of collecting data for a research project. Therefore, this section presents the methodology that has been used to conduct this research.
Qualitative method was the central point of this study. A qualitative study design is defined as “an inquiry process of understanding a social or human problems, based on building a complex, or holistic picture, formed with words, reporting detailed views of respondants or informants, and or contacted in a natural setting” (Cresswell, 1994, p. 2). This was a desktop study where already published sources were used. Fahnestock and Secor (1990, p. 77) indicate that qualitative is “rather deductive, since we will begin with some assumptions about argument as widely held as possible, which we then test against a body of evidence as representative as we could make it, on the way to some conclusions, as tentative as they must be”. The qualitative research design is concerned with the understanding, experience and interpretation of the social world. It is both flexible and sensitive to the social context in which data are produced (Masson, 2002, p. 3). The qualitative method is used to organise and stimulate the meaning of the content in the novels and draw conclusions from them. This method is also good in gaining in-depth understanding and providing descriptions of how characters bring forth the feminist arguments in connection with rhetoric. According to Mlambo (2013), qualitative methods are also effective in identifying intangible factors whose role in the research issue may not be easily apparent. Therefore, since a qualitative method was used in this study, there
has not been any fieldwork, but rather a literary analysis of imaginative short fiction.
