AFRICA IN RETROSPECT AND THE FUTURE: A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF DEVIATION AND PARALLELISM IN DIOP’S AFRICA

Charles Djorbua, Isaac Danquah Darko, Daniel Afrifa-Yamoah

Abstract


Attention of language scholars has been shifting from the structural pattern of language to language as a functional unit given the change of interest from the form of a language to its function. This study presents a stylistic analysis of a well-known poem by David Diop “Africa” and analyses the unique role that language plays in projecting the central theme of the poem. The poem Africa is one of the poems that laments the ill treatments that Africa suffered in the hands of its colonialists, but which quickly paints a picture of hope for the continent. The researchers used foregrounding both as a stylistic theory and a method to analyse the poem so as to investigate how linguistic deviations and parallel structures are employed to project the central theme of the poem. The study revealed that both linguistic deviations and parallel structures as well as figurative expressions abound in the poem. These linguistic tools have, in no doubt, contributed immensely to the projection of the overall meaning of the poem – Africa’s past glories, present predicaments of suffering and humiliation under colonialism and the future of hope and freedom embedded in Africa’s rebirth. The study concludes that language and literary works contribute in a unified manner to expose the rots in society and then project a future of hope.

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Keywords


stylistics, Africa, parallel structures, linguistic deviation, foregrounding

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejlll.v5i2.271

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