ABSTRACT
Styles in literary compositions has a periscopic function. It implicate the writer’s ideologies, background and intentions; it gives expression to his fertile imagination and thoughts. On the part of the reader, the style used is elemental in deconstructing the text. Writers overtime, have appropriated a variety of techniques as a vehicle of channelling their worldviews. Lola Shoneyin has earned her reputation and fame not just because of the stories she tell, but how she tell these stories. According to the formalists the straightforwardness of a text is not constituted in the ability of the reader to familiarize the defamiliarized, but in recognizing the tensions created in the style used by the writer. This study therefore, using Halliday’s Systematic Functional linguistic theory is an attempt to interrogate the styles used by Shoneyin in her work; The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, in order to establish the lexical features, grammatical features and thematic concern of the text. The analyses revealed that Shoneyin’s astuteness employed brilliant style with various sentence types to sustain readers’ interest. The story line was clearly plotted and it brought originality to the work and her choice of words proves assertion that no two individuals with a common language use it in eaxactly the same way.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: General Introduction
1.1 Background to the Study
1.2 Statement of Research Problem
1.3 Aim and Objective of Study
1.4 Significance of the Study
CHAPTER TWO: Review of Relevant Literature
2.1 Review of Basic Stylistic Concepts
2.1.1 The Concept of Style
2.1.2 The Notion of Stylistics
2.2 The Concept of Feminism
2.3 Review of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar
2.3.1 The Key Elements of SFL
2.3.2 SFL as an Applicable Tradition
2.3.4 Examples of the Value of Applying SFL
CHAPTER THREE: Methodology
3.0 Introduction
3.1 Data and Method of Collection
3.2 Theoretical Framework
CHAPTER FOUR: Data Presentation and Analysis
4.0 Introduction
4.1 Analysis of the thematic concerns of the novel
4.2 Analysis of the grammatical Features of the text
4.2.1 Sentence Types
4.2.2 Simple Sentences
4.2.3 Compound Sentences
4.2.4 Complex Sentences
4.3 Analysis of the lexical features of the text
4.3.1 Diction and Register
4.3.2 Figures of Speech
4.3.2.1 Simile
4.3.2.2 Personification
4.3.2.3 Hyperbole
4.3.2.4 Alliteration
4.3.2.5 The Use of Poetry
4.4 Discussion of Findings
CHAPTER FIVE: Summary and Conclusion
5.1 Summary
5.2 Conclusion
5.3 Recommendations for Further Study
References
