A Critical Discourse Analysis of Soyinka’s The Beatification of Area Boy

Francis Setonji Yede

doi:10.7176/jlll/66-04

Abstract

This paper is a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of Soyinka’s The Beatification of Area Boy . It critically interrogates the pattern of speech of the characters and its relation to how social power abuse and inequality are enacted, reproduced and resisted in the text. The analysis of the text unravels the perennial issues of corruption, poverty and societal imbalance which exemplify socio-political problems in Nigeria. There is also the reflection of the use of discursive features such as a variety of simple, compound and complex sentences to achieve pragmatic functions of social and interpersonal language use like interrogating issues, declaring personal motive and commenting on socio-political issues. These functions reflect communicative interactions in the realm of political, economic and cultural practices of Nigerians in the conversation situations analysed in the texts. Analysis of the text illustrates the view of the deprived people and shows that those who are in power are responsible for the use of language to create power and social inequality. CDA is therefore a useful tool to access salient information in texts and talk in order to checkmate power abuse and social inequality. The paper concludes that Soyinka’s use of language in the text foregrounds social imbalance and disorientation of the people by the ruling class. Keywords : Critical Discourse Analysis, Social Inequality, Ideology, Abuse of Political Power, Power Relation. DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/66-04 Publication date: March 31 st 2020

Highlights

The Beatification of Area Boy (The Beatification) one of Soyinka’s plays was published in 1995
From Kazemian and Hashemi’s (2014:10) point of view, “Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an interdisciplinary analytical viewpoint which looks into the relationship between power and discourse, and it investigates the way in which authority, dominance and social inequality are constructed, sustained, reproduced and resisted in the discourse of written texts and spoken words.”
CDA’s main objective is to represent the influential role that language plays in emanation of power and legitimitisation of social inequalities

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The Beatification of Area Boy (The Beatification) one of Soyinka’s plays was published in 1995. The play pinpoints the situation with the illustration of the human body parts believed to be the potent materials for money making rituals to illuminate the shared popular belief in ritual money making among the poor or the downtrodden in the socio-economic situation of the Nigerian society. Van Dijk (2003) regards CDA “as a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political contexts.”. From Kazemian and Hashemi’s (2014:10) point of view, “CDA is an interdisciplinary analytical viewpoint which looks into the relationship between power and discourse, and it investigates the way in which authority, dominance and social inequality are constructed, sustained, reproduced and resisted in the discourse of written texts and spoken words.”. From the above definitions, Amoussou and Allagbe (2018:6) infer “that some key concepts Such as power, dominance, hegemony, ideology, discrimination, social order, reproduction, resistance, struggle, etc. figure prominently in any work of CDA.”

METHODS AND THEORETICAL

1: BARBER

3: Mama Put

5: CHIEF KINGBOLI

10: VICTIM

Conclusion