ABSTRACT
This dissertation entitled, Intertextuality and Context: A Functional Linguistic Study of Biyi Bandele‟s The Man Who Came In From The Back Of Beyondand Burma Boy conceptualises the levels of intertextual influx of the two novels via multi-leveled layers of context. It buttresses the linguistic review rather than the literary and examines how at least one text depends upon the postures of the other text. The study examines the manner in which two texts of intra-authorial and intra-generic work exhibit certain levels of intertextuality. In order to achieve textual tightness, the work uses a blend of Halliday‟s (2004) Systemic Functional Grammar-SFG through scale and category theory and Halliday and Hasan‟s (1976) Cohesion as the theoretical frame of analysis. It also embodies Firbas (1992) analytical model to stimulate theme/rheme structuration and their possible prominence. Owing to the analytical approach, and using text-linguistics levels of context, the outcome show that both texts possess textual relations. The findings also demonstrate that, two texts written by an author under the realm of a distinct genre-class retain the inclination of text-context-author-language convergence and intertextual relevance. Thus, by text-craft and artful tradition, text is opened to encapsulate citations, presuppositions, rhetoric, discourse and stylistic loads of another text principally of the same artistic entity.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.0 Preamble
This chapter foregrounds the focus of the study by examining the relevant and key variables of the dissertation and how they function in the development and the realization of intertextuality and context of the two texts. It states among other things statement of the problem (how and why the research is designed to address its outlined problem). It also further addresses the research questions, aim and objectives, significance and the scope of the study and the biography of the author of the two texts under study, and how these variables project the actualization of intertextuality and context of the texts.
1.1 Background to the Study
This chapter addresses discussions of text as a process and text as a product. The development of text in this regard involves not only construing semantic/pragmatic relations to the immediate textual, or even situational context that linguistic properties mean, but by construing relations to other texts and situation in which those linguistic properties are used. The research therefore predicates the place of contextuality in textuality and intertextuality as they achieve textual status via functional language use.Context is a phenomenon which determines the contextualization of a text,by varied levels of context: context of situation, context of culture and context of text.
Intertextuality as a concept has its background rooted in the Contemporary Literary and Cultural theory, and has its origin in the 20th century linguistics, particularly in the work of Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure (1858-1913). The term textuality was coined by the Bulgarian-French philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva in the 1960s (Kristeva1986). Literary writings were constructed like a mosaic out of the textsof others. The works of Bandele demonstrate high level of co-occurrences, perhaps, because the texts appear mostly in the realm of historical, psychological and social recollections. Owing to this, Kristeva (1986) posits that majority of writers borrow ideas from other works of either the same or different genre. In fact, when readers read text with reflection to other literary works, all related assumptions, effects and ideas of other texts provide them different meaning and change the technique of interpretation of the original piece. This means that speakers and writers make presuppositions about the textual experiences of the people with whom they interact. The study of linguistic similarities of texts is not only restricted to the study of language, but the study of the theories and methods of Linguistics (Fowler, 1971:38). The crucial point is that linguistic study undertaken, for instance, Halliday is essentially unselective and purposeful. Fowler adds that the total meaning of a text is more than the sum of its formal and referential meanings.Dearing (1974) confirms that the goal of textual analysis is not merely to provide a genealogy or the historical fact of the state of a text, but more importantly to identify the state from which all others have descended or, an insight in the relatedness of the texts in many forms. It is on this premise that the research aims to study Biyi Bandele‟s The Man Who Came In From The Back Of Beyond(1991)and Burma Boy(2007) emanates, and how they closely permeate through the mainstream of context and intertextuality.
A text as an entity is defined from different spheres of usage. Some intellectuals define it from linguistic view point. For instance, Halliday (1976) sees text as any passage of spoken or written form which forms a unified whole. It is a stretch of linguistic structures which posit meaning in complete or partial and through its texture and textuality. The textuality of text according to Beard (2008) is construed through textual unity (cohesion and cohesiveness). In literary
dimension, a text is a state of composition of ideas, process and events through the interplay of literariness of usage. The central taskof textual analysisand the form in which the two primary texts willbe viewed arevia their writteness form of language, thereby examining not only the narrative episodes of the texts (novels) but the functional elements of language and how they facilitate the realization of intertextual relations. This study confirms the Halliday‟s (1976) definition of text. The texts,hence, will be treated asa whole entity but the analysis should concern only certain linguistic forms.Consequently, the study of the texts is principally on pragmatic analysis; the analysis focuses on viewing language which takes into account not only the formal elements of any text of utterance, but its implicatures, functions and roles. This is essentially to see text as discourse, that is, a text with social, interpersonal and communicative functions, not merely a site where language is organized. Mercer (1988: 81) in support of pragmatic impact in communication adds that the information conveyed by an utterance of a sentence on a particular occasion are made by the speakers‟ social function as a statement, a suggestion, a request, etc., and other factors.
Doing Discourse Analysis here certainly involves not doing Syntax and Semantics exclusively but primarily consists of doing Pragmatics (Brown and Yule, 1988 , & Olateju and Oyebode 2014). Halliday insists that without an examination of grammar and language in its wholesome, there is no reason for making any particular classification of languages, unless one uses external psychological or sociological generalization about the uses of language. He finds in the structure of clause three functions: the ideational, expressing content; the interpersonal– maintaining social relations; and the textual– enabling links to be made with situation.
Intertextuality, as a concept has achieved great impetus in the linguistic study of text (Text Linguistics), which concerns primarily with the systematic study of language and text. It further involves the study of textuality which functions as „Constitutive Principles‟ and „Regulative Principles‟ of text (de Beaugrande and Dressler 1982). This examines the functional composition of language as opposed to structure, Halliday (1985 & 2004). The Constitutive Principles include: cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informative, situational, and intertextuality, while Regulative Principles include: efficiency, effectivenessand appropriateness. It is in this field of linguistic studythat the concept intertextuality and context, with which this research is concerned, emerged.
The selected texts are written by the same author under the realm of the same literary-linguistic corpus. It is therefore acknowledged that the tendency of both novels to share compatible resemblance in quality, product and process becomes very tenable. In other words, texts especially under similar conditions of genre and corpus textually co-occur. This affirms Kristeva‟s concept of intertextuality. Writers of whatever corpus of literature choose a definite style, and every analysis of style is an attempt to find out the artistic principles underlying the writer‟s choice of language. The embodiment of style choice by any artistic effort in any oeuvre can be handled by different fields of linguistics more especially Stylistics and Pragmatics which give prominence to context and style.
Existing researches and scholastic endeavors on the influence of context and contextuality of text focus attention on literary analysis of intertextuality. The position they affirm especially by the Structuralists states that text is a product of other literary productions which paves the way for cross cultural dependence. Barthes (1977:147) underscores that,
We know that a text is not a line of words releasing a single theological meaning (the message of the author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centres of culture.
Thus, the position of context in textual development becomes substantially based that Schiffrin (1996) in Hymes (2007:185-6) examines how individual conversation is viewed as social action situated in a particular type of context.‟ It is against this setting, Lodge (1973:407) comments that “The intertextual relations of text are never purely literary, but can spring from the knowledge of its period, discourse in circulation which are themselves parts of intertextual properties”. Ahmad (2012) for instance acknowledges that Bandele‟s Burma Boy traces its literary engagement on historical context. The remittance of this task is reinforced by Bandele in his admission of the fact that the novel is shared both oral and textual historical accounts. He adds that, in his textualisation of history, Bandele utilises protocols of narratology and linguistic energeiasuch as the story telling made, deformation and defamilirisation of the characters and situation of war. This contextualization process of Burma Boy becomes uniquely similar with that of progenitor novel-The Man Who Came in From the Back of Beyond which appears distinct in their narrative assemblages. Bakhtin (1981) among the Russian formalists explains that language in use is essentially „dialogic‟, every speech act springs from previous utterances and being structured in expectation of a future response, and has implications that spread far beyond the field of literary studies. In contrast to that, given an adequate specification of the semiotic properties of context by Halliday, they should be, to make sensible predictions about the semantic properties of texts associated with it.
In functional linguistic and intertextual study of text, it is pertinent to develop a means of establishing a relationship of specific variables or sets of variables within context. This must include reference to the on-going situation from which the text is constructed, the wider culture-including the social institutions and ideologies that constitute this form which the immediate situation is derived and the context of the text itself, with specific linguistic variables.More recent works, however, underline the significance of social/cultural processes on the linguistic process and intertextuality. As Jay Lemke makes vivid,
It is not just by construing semantic relations to the immediate textual, or even situational, context that we make a word or phrase mean. It is also by construing relations to other texts of situation in which the word or phrase has been used…what is often missing is contextual models of semantics in reference to intertextual contextualisation (Lemke, 1988:165). Lemke(ibid 1988:163)further posits that,Intertextuality as construct is the context of texts which may belong to the same activity or structure (but not the same text) or to other texts of the same genre, or of the same thematic or discourse information.Similarly, in textual examination, Halliday (1978) and Malmkjear (2002) aver that language is the ability to „mean‟ in the situation or social context, which are generated by culture. Theytherefore view text as a product of a complex interaction between the larger culture and the means of its creation; it is the process of continuous movement through a system, a process which both expresses the higher orders of meaning that constitutes the „social semiotics‟.Text meaning does not only infer by just structural formation. Therefore, Linguistic expression/utterance only takes meaning in the context of a system of rules which depicts how they are applied, singly or in combination, for specific purpose in specific situation.
Kuchera (1976:7) further, confirms that, meaning is nothing but the function of an utterance in the communicative process. Text meaning or relation draws upon the concept, rhetoric or ideology from other texts to be merged in the new text. It may be re-telling the story of an old story, or re-writing the popular stories in modern context, for instance James Joyce retells Odyssey in his very famous novel Ulysses. Frank Edgan- Dare Dubu da Daya, (Hausa version) of One Thousand Nights and through which onecontextualisessteady discourse from an Arabian text-Alfa Laila wa Lailat. Birch (1995:17) in his bid to support the degree of contextual impact in the intertextuality of text unveils the concept of Contextual Expression. He further states that meaning is made by contextualisation. Thus a context is categorized as textual, situational and cultural and this is supported in the following: All words which describe the native social order, all expression referring to native beliefs, to specific customs, ceremonies, magical rites-all such words are obviously absent from English, as from any European language. Such words can only be translated into English not by given their Imaginary equivalent- a real one obviously cannot be found-but by explaining the meaning of each of them through an exact ethnographic account of the sociology, culture and tradition of that native community, Malinowski 1923/1994 in Hewings and Hewings (2005:26).
Halliday (2004) in agreement with Green (1969) advocates in the general philosophy of meaning
that linguistic expressions need to be interpreted in terms of the functional level of the language
(context). To achieve intertextuality and context in this view, Halliday and Hasan (1976) assert that, unity, coherence and text relations are gained mostly through cohesive and cohesion
mechanisms. Beard (2008) dichotomizes cohesion into lexical and grammatical as text steps out either intrinsically (Endophoric reference) or extrinsically (Exophoric reference), or by forward pointing (cataphoric) and backward pointing (anaphoric) links.
1.2 Biographical Account of Biyi Bandele
Biyi Bandele Thomas, a prolific artist was brought up by the custody of sundry and heterogeneous cultural backgrounds. He was born in Kafanchan in Kaduna State, in the Northern Nigeria, though his parental origin is from the South Western Nigeria-a typical Yoruba by tribe.Bandele instilled the quest of artistic tradition at the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, where he acquainted himself on dramatic arts. His artistic culture triggered his career where he moved to London and worked at the Royal Court Theatre where he directed his works‟ thrust on Wole Soyinka‟s works, and there he met different global famous artists. The story of Biyi Bandele reflects in most of his works, in such manner,some consume his works as quasi-autobiographical recollections. Thus, topmost of the concern of his works is to explore and provide bedeviling effects of the socially-ill attitudes mingling in furthermost Nigerian societies, married with construing the reifying of the Nigerian Civil War and the Second World War. The concern of the aforementioned competing societal issues, especially the two wars are not unconnected with his experience derived from their possible aftermath. Bandele‟s father is known to be among the participants of the Second World War who fought for Britain against Japan in the Second World War. Subsequently he lost his brother in the course of the war, who is also among the frontiers of the Nigerian Civil War combatants. This can be averred going by what he iterated in the epilogue of Burma Boy that „When I was a child, I remembered war was something that sprang up a lot in the conversation on the part of my dad who talked about the war like one big party‟. This is what Bandele voiced out. Owing to this, Bandele adopts Chimamanda Adaichie‟s book on Nigerian Civil War. Similarly, Bandele is now revolving in the triad artistic careers-a novelist, a dramatist and a film director.
1.3 Statement of the Problem
The art of text making or exploration assumes to comprise involvement of multifarious textual, linguistic and other contextual features. Some textual artists point out that the successful accomplishment of text is as a result of the author‟s stylistic choices while some denounce that, attributing the notion that text-development results from the compelling linguistic characteristics which are intrinsically or extrinsically regulated. This supports the view that authorial stylistic choices form expressively inadequate as far as text-craft is concern. Another outstanding viewpoint of designing, developing and possibly shaping pragmatic or semantic meaning of text emanates from textual correspondence, through textual interconnectedness. For example, Kristeva (1986) and Baynham (1995) agree that the text is in context relation with other text, and through the assemblages of web or network of set of experiences. This argument brings another problematic standpoint, supposing that linguistic components of text do not exclusively facilitate textual or intertextual disposition. Thus, this compelling problem creates another subjective impression on how text is enacted and transmitted.
Writers, use different forms of styles to achieve artful prominence in their works. Style in this context can be idiosyncratic, corpus-related or an amalgam of both. From whatever point of usage, style provides the basic and preparatory tool in which textual formations are designed and implemented. This is because it is only through such styles that textsgain distinctiveness and aesthetic qualities. The dominant argument among many scholars not only in literary discourse but in the field ofText Linguisticsis that, the attainment of the independence of text essentially resultsfrom intertextuality inflow and context consequence. Owing to this assertion, many researches that preluded this study in that regard conceive intertextual relations between or among authors or texts, noting how they share certain level of textual relations. To justify this point, some of the works have basically considered intertext relation from mostly literary perspectives whereby the relations arebased on literary traditionwhich the texts manifest. Others have seen the intertext relations from texts written by different authors, while some discussed it from texts of varied genres. However such studies situated less attention to text linguistics functions in the realisation of intertextuality of text.A study of intertextual relation suggests that textual interconnectedness is attainable from text of intra-generic intertextuality. Yet, intertextuality can as well manifest in texts of different genres, for example the novel and drama text, poetry and prose or film and the like. Some of the previous studies, such as Ibrahim (2016), Kurfi (2014), Ahmad (2012), Ogede (2011), Aragay (2005) etcetera came up with different findings of how intertextuality manifests in or among texts or authors.
However, this study, in order to arrive at the negotiating point on the proceeding arguments support the manner in which intertextuality of intra-generic texts and author can be essentially conceived through various textual evidences. In addition, this study bases ground on how Bandele‟s „The Man Who Came in From The Back of Beyond and „Burma Boy‟ show such evidences of intertextuality unlike in the previous studies that left some gaps which need not be glossed over.
1.4 Research Questions
The study strives to answer the following research questions:
- How do contextual factors,cohesion and cohesive mechanisms trigger the intertext of the texts?
- What pattern and manner of the functional level of language facilitate the levels of the intertext?
- How dolanguage usage and use govern language-text-author-style and context relationship especially in the evident accessingintertextuality in the texts?
1.5 Aim and Objectives of the Research
The major aim of the research is to investigate the intertextual relations of the two of Biyi Bandele‟s novels The Man Who Came in From the Back of Beyond and Burma Boyusing SFG. Similarly, the objectives of the work are to:
- investigate how the contextual properties and cohesive properties aid the texts‟ intra and intertext connections.
- explore the manner in which the functional levels of language facilitate the textual intersection of the two texts examined.
- explicatethe manner in which language and usage form an avenue in the attainment of intertextuality and context.
1.6 Significance of the Study
This research studies the intertextuality and context of the two texts: The Man Who Came In From The Back Of Beyond and Burma Boyof Biyi Bandele Thomas. In view of this, the study substantiates on how the texts are explored especially via functional linguistic bases and come up with extent of intertext relations of the texts. In addition to this, it attempts to increase the prospect of study of author‟s stylistic choices and their effect in text-craft.In this regard, the study attempts to contribute to the understanding of the spectrum of contextual knowledge and how it aids in the intra and intertextual flow. This notwithstanding increases the knowledge of cohesion and cohesive influence in particularly written texts. By and large, the work gears toward enabling students, researchers and artists with impetus of the discovery that every level of text-making needs cross-textual interdependence and reference.
1.7 Scope and Delimitation of the Study
The research pays much attention on intertextual and contextual of The Man Who Came in From the Back of Beyondand Burma Boy that are written by a single author, and this is analyzed using the combination of Systemic Functional Linguisticsthrough Scale and Category Theory and Cohesion as the exclusive frame of analysis. Besides, it embodies study and examination of different linguistic forms mostly clauses and to a large extent, paragraph structures that are drawn from each text, and how they collectively contribute to the realization of the research aim and objectives
