Writing Pain: Trauma and Discourse Stratagems in Chimamanda Adichie's Purple Hibiscus
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- Date Submitted: 02/12/2011 03:13 PM
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Writing Pain: Trauma and Discourse Stratagems in
Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus
I. Introduction
Literary communication involves artistic representation and imaginative depiction of man in society through various techniques of linguistic expression. It communicates attitudes, expresses sensations, perceptions, themes and emotions and aspires to entertain and move the reader. The writer tries to achieve these goals through significant lexical and structural choices, figures of expression, eloquent phrasing, vivid imagery and idioms of feeling. These linguistic choices and their certain link to trauma as situational constraint are examined in this paper using discourse analysis as critical framework. Discourse analysis, “the study of language in use”(Brown and Yule,1983,p3; Johnstone, 2008,p.2) involves a pragmatic interpretation of significant linguistic choices by drawing attention to their deep layer meaning, connotative idioms, prejudices and mannerisms as well as extra textual anxieties and dedications that generate such choices. It favours an eclectic approach, which involves a conglomeration of critical discourse and linguistic theories, as well as lexical, structural and suprasentential representations of meaning.
Thus, descriptive/ content analysis based on insights from discourse analysis and psychoanalytic criticism forms the framework for this paper. Similarly, these insights are modulated by relevant schemes from the Systemic (Functional) Grammar, which sees language as a form of social behaviour with interest on the communicativeness or the functional value of a text, the interaction of language and its situation or contexts of use. Consciousness discourse, which equates with Fowler’s (1977, p. 212) “mind-style,” is inspired by Halliday’s ideational or representational function of language, and implicated in the dialogues and narrator’s accounts in the texts. In this context, “the world-view...
Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus
I. Introduction
Literary communication involves artistic representation and imaginative depiction of man in society through various techniques of linguistic expression. It communicates attitudes, expresses sensations, perceptions, themes and emotions and aspires to entertain and move the reader. The writer tries to achieve these goals through significant lexical and structural choices, figures of expression, eloquent phrasing, vivid imagery and idioms of feeling. These linguistic choices and their certain link to trauma as situational constraint are examined in this paper using discourse analysis as critical framework. Discourse analysis, “the study of language in use”(Brown and Yule,1983,p3; Johnstone, 2008,p.2) involves a pragmatic interpretation of significant linguistic choices by drawing attention to their deep layer meaning, connotative idioms, prejudices and mannerisms as well as extra textual anxieties and dedications that generate such choices. It favours an eclectic approach, which involves a conglomeration of critical discourse and linguistic theories, as well as lexical, structural and suprasentential representations of meaning.
Thus, descriptive/ content analysis based on insights from discourse analysis and psychoanalytic criticism forms the framework for this paper. Similarly, these insights are modulated by relevant schemes from the Systemic (Functional) Grammar, which sees language as a form of social behaviour with interest on the communicativeness or the functional value of a text, the interaction of language and its situation or contexts of use. Consciousness discourse, which equates with Fowler’s (1977, p. 212) “mind-style,” is inspired by Halliday’s ideational or representational function of language, and implicated in the dialogues and narrator’s accounts in the texts. In this context, “the world-view...