international journal of science commerce and humanities volume

International journal of Science Commerce and Humanities Volume No 2 No 4 May 2014

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LANGUAGE MIXING AND INFORMAL SPEECH: A DISCOURSE

STYLISTIC STUDY OF SELECTED LITERARY TEXTS

DR. SUSAN OPARA

Imo State University

Owerri, Nigeria

P.M.B 2000

[email protected]

2348034350486

Abstract

The relating of marked forms of a text to their functions can be difficult for some students of stylistics. The

article complements all stylistic analysis of Emechete’s texts as it attempts to relate form to function, indicate

choices made to convey information and focus on the pragmatic and stylistic dimensions of language mixing

and informal speech. Speech extracts are isolated and described using the systemic functional linguistics. The

analysis reveals patterns of discourse indicating informal situations in addition to disclosing themes. It also

reveals choices of various linguistic and situation clues conveying a focused and continuous flow of ideas

centering on Emecheta’s gender interest. The analytic approach exposes how systems bring out aesthetics and

thematic issues in texts. The study contributes to the stylistic knowledge on discourse in fiction.

Keywords: System, Effect, Gender, Discourse-stylistics, Language mixing.

1.0 Introduction

Stylistics is like the study of music. The more you look closely at it, the more you see its essentials. It is

a systematic analytic study of literary style, enclosing linguistic and non-linguistic features of artistry. The

writer organizes his text to achieve a purpose. He uses various devices not only to communicate but to persuade

the reader to accept his message.

Emecheta is one of the most acclaimed women writers in Africa. Bernth Lindfors, in his empirical

survey, “Big shots and little shots of the Anglophone African „literary canon‟ places her in a tetrarchy of the

most influential of contemporary African women writers” (Umeh, 1996:i). She has written about thirteen

novels, four children‟s books, a collection of photographs, plays and numerous essays and articles for learned

journals and magazines. Second-class citizen (1977), is more like her autobiography and it traces the life of

Adah and her family in Britain The novel centers around cultural conflict, Adah‟s refusal to accept second class

status in Britain and the problem of multiple child bearing. Joys of Motherhood (1982) is set in Africa and

examines how culture determines women‟s lives. It is essentially a protest against the way the Igbo society ties

down women through various patriarchal rules and beliefs. Double yoke (1985) reflects how a female could, at

the same time, play the roles of a daughter, a wife, friend, a mother and an academic. It also presents an

emancipated female image. Emecheta attributes her literary achievements especially her style to Charles

Dickens style in Great Expectations, David Copperfield and Oliver Twist. She often starts writing by tracing a

character‟s development from childhood to maturity. Her objective in writing like any storyteller is to engage

the reader, get his audience and then put across her message. According to Umeh (1996), her novels reflect

sexual politics in the Igbo society.

This study is guided by the contextual categories of field, mode and tenor, especially field which is the

system of meaning reflecting the social environment where characters exchange meaning. Lexical words which

function as the main items for conveying more information are used to make for a wide range of choices. Tone

too, which is a pitch movement and a system of meaning, could be used to convey effective communication as

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well as distinguish words, attitudes and meanings. Discourse-stylistics and systemic functional linguistics are

important concepts in the article; hence the terms are described before the analysis of language mixing and

informal speech.

2.0 Discourse- stylistics

Discourse- stylistics is a discourse centred- stylistics. It is a broad-based discipline in linguistics dealing

with the functional aspects of language. It is concerned with the analysis of communication to reveal functions

using various tools of analysis including textual peculiarity, speech acts theory, presupposition and cooperative

principle. Such analysis leads to appreciation of style in speech.

Discourse –stylistics facilitates the description of language in action (Michael Hoey, 1998). By depicting

language in action, it concentrates on structural analysis, complexities of poetic discourse and implied

meanings. While discourse analysis analyses what is communicated in discourse, stylistics closely looks at how

it is communicated.

Stylistics could generally be seen as the study of style which sometimes quantifies the frequencies of

occurrence of stylistic features. Style itself could be seen as a pattern in the text reflecting not only how and to

what effect a feature is used but also the writer‟s choice of words, devices, manner, attitude and logical

arrangement of the text. Hence, it could be deviant, district, coherent, habitual, and could have implied

meanings and aesthetic appeal. Halliday‟s systemic functional linguistics sees style as choice (Bloor and Bloor

1995: 159).

2.1 Discourse and Text

Discourse is language use. The functionalists see its study as the study of any aspect of language use. It

is also a system indicating social and cultural ways of speaking through which people perform many functions

(Shiffrin, 1994: 32; Fasold, 1990: 65).

Like discourse, a text is a piece of language in use for the purpose of communication. Halliday

(2000:366) sees it as a system that is “meaningful because it is the actualization of the potential that constitutes

the linguistic system”. It is both a functional language that “plays a part in a context of situation” and an

exchange with meaning whose main form is that of dialogue of interaction between speakers. Language is a

“three- level semiotic system, where the text, semantically unified through cohesive patterns, is the locus of

choices in experiential, textual and interpersonal meaning” (Lipson, 2002).

3.0 Systemic Functional Linguistics Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is based on the functions language performs and on the choice the

language user makes. It is flexible, embracing and matches form to function. The model adopts a social

perspective which sees language as behaviour (Melrose, 1995: 24). Ideational, interpersonal and textual

metafunctions display patterns of the English language through which meanings are revealed. Theme, cohesion,

information, mood and transitivity are very important aspects of the SFL. Textual, mood and transitivity

structures relate to the three metafunctions and indicate different meanings. The systems and the metafunctions

are the twin pillars of the SFL.

4.0 Analysis and Results

Language mixing occurs in bilingual and multi-lingual settings and produces a hybridization of

discourse. It is one of the “strategies of inter-cultural communication” (Jowitt, 2000). It features significantly in

the speech of Emecheta‟s characters as exemplified below:


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a. Akpan:….. I am a traditionalist, oozing Ibibio purity from every pore… a no

de for disi una sweety belle stuff…” Isa: “Na so for me ooo. One woman be

like anoder. Why ago go kill myself for one chick, that wan pass me…” (DY,

p. 146)

b. …. “Wallai!” Isa exclaimed. “I won‟t want a girl like that, never!” (Double

York, p.145).

Akpa‟s utterance in (a) is an instance of code-mixing. He uses two languages English and pidgin within the

same sentence. There is also an instance of code-switching within the discourse situation as Isa switches code to

Pidgin English. In (b) Isa also switches code from Hausa language item wallai to English. Language mixing

indicates second language situations.

4.1 Pidgin English

There is a marked use of Pidgin English in DY, pp. 145-146. Though a „language‟ of its own, it enriches

and influences Nigerian English because it is used in informal communication. As a hybridized language, it

contains elements of both African languages and a lot of borrowings from English. Linguistically, it is

simplified, mixed, impoverished and restricted as it serves a limited number of functions and is usually seen as a

language whose users have low level proficiency in English. It differs from Broken English which shows

extreme deviation from the standard norms especially in syntax (Jowitt 2000;Trudgill and Hannah 1989:96).

4.2 American English

American English (AmE) influences Emecheta‟s choice of words. Some AmE vocabulary items and

usage tendencies could be seen from these speech forms.

a. They were all given good compensatory posts with fatter pay packets, and of course this made

prices rocket (JOM, p.188).

b. There were four other wooden kiosks where previously hers had been alone (JOM, p.161).

c. “Maybe if I had a peaceful childhood, and not had to spend my young days selling paraffin and

carrying firewood- (JOM, p.185).

Rocket, Kiosks and paraffin are lexical words of American origin. Rocket originates as a result of American

technological explorations; it denotes price hikes of goods. Its use as a verb in the utterance typifies AmE usage

tendencies of having productive ways of forming verbs or derivations and of changing a word‟s grammatical

class (Trudgill 1989:75). Kiosks in (b) denote “small open structures where newspapers, refreshments, etc are

sold” ( Igboanusi, 2002). In (c) the EngEng meaning for paraffin is kerosene.

4.3 Biblical Language

One of the hallmarks of Emecheta‟s style is its influence by biblical language as exemplified in the

following speech extracts.

a. “Please, Mary the Mother of God, why did you let this happen to my friend?” (JOM, p.66).

b. “Remember, God giveth and God taketh away. We are His, and He treats us the way He feels”

(JOM, p. 66)

c. But these people worship as they worshipped in the dark ages. Their prayer books are full of

words like „thou‟, and „thine‟ and phrases like „from thence‟ …..(DY, pp. 122-123).

d. The rain could go on pouring, until it became like the flood in the Bible (JOM, p.82).

In (a) Emecheta chooses words and expressions with denotation and connotation meanings. The choice of the

expression Mary the Mother of God, for instance, reveals the situation in Igbo land where majority of Christians

tend to belong initially to the orthodox churches especially the Catholic Church. In (b) the lexical items giveth

and taketh away are exponents of the archaic forms of biblical language; so also is thou, thine, from thence. In


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(c) the paradigmatic choices of these words depict not only student‟s idiolect on religion but also the emergence

of Pentecostal churches. In (b) the capitalization of the pronouns His, He, with God as their antecedent is a

strategy meant to give respect to God. The lexical item flood in (d) is transference of biblical language

meanings into English in order to create the imagery of heavy rain down pour similar to that which occurred in

the biblical story. The comparative adjective like explicitly signals this synonymic relationship and reveals

Emecheta‟s experience of the rainy season in Lagos.

Emecheta‟s use of English could be said to be marked by influences of nativization, literal language,

American and biblical English, Nigerian languages and Pidgin English.

4.4 Informal Speech

Another hallmark of Emecheta‟s style is her use of colloquial speech. Samples of verb forms, such as,

I’m, I’ll, I’ve (DY, p.129); and won’t I’d (DY, p. 146); together with can’t, don’t, that’s (DY, p. 70) exemplify

contracted form, depicting informal speech situation environments as illustrated in the conversation between Ete

and his friends at the University of Calabar. Likewise, her use of imperatives, vocatives and Pidgin English

together with idiosyncratic patterns exemplified by idioms, such as, evil eye, angry clouds, behind her back and

irregular prepositional usages, such as, rushed in, … (SCC, p.101), engrossed in (SCC, p. 5) and ripped down

(DY, 112) culminate to give her style a colloquial character.

Buchi Emecheta could be classified among those who use what (Jowitt, 2000) calls style II because she

uses a variety of words to achieve “concrete, personal and informal communication”. Bamgbose (1995:20)

identifies nativization, the influence of biblical language and the importation of Americanisms as important

characteristics of standard Nigerian English.

5.0 Conclusion The article contributes to the understanding of Emecheta‟s rhetorical style and highlights her

contribution in creating a nativised English in Nigeria. The focus is on the pragmatic and stylistic dimensions of

the selected speech extracts. Halliday‟s SFL is the main approach used for the analysis. Findings reveal the use

of words to indicate direct address and create imagery giving way to a style that is colloquial in character. Loan

words feature prominently especially in Joy of Motherhood to surface the world views of Emecheta‟s

characters. She frequently gives the English translations of the loan words to make meaning to her non-Igbo

audience. Peculiar use of words and expressions to extend second language meanings feature prominently.

There are also similar forms from the bible to feature the socio-cultural environment of the characters.

The pragmatic and stylistic analyses of the speeches reveal the linguistic choices Emecheta made to

sustain the readers‟ interest and effectively communicate her message. Emecheta has assisted to create a

nativized English in Nigeria.


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