Aspects of Innovative Language Use in Femi Adedina’s <i>Highway to Nowhere</i>

Abstract

Code switching and mixing, lexical transfer, loan blend and semantic extension are innovations in the novel of Femi Adedina’s, Highway to Nowhere (HTN), the text used in this paper. Barbaresi’s Morphopragmatics, which integrates morphology and pragmatics, is the theoretical perspective. Our analysis focused on the aspects of code switching/ mixing, lexical transfer and loan blend used in HTN. Yoruba codes that cannot be pragmatically translated into English language codes but switched and mixed were analysed. Meaning of terms that contain semantic extension, figurative/proverbial and deep traditional Yoruba meanings were explicated. Lexical transfer of items like mágùn, Ìkòkò, Àkosèjáyé, etc., were done to locate the novel in Yoruba traditional and cultural contexts. The study concluded that writers of literary works in English as a second language should preserve the sacred codes/names that things are called in their cultures in the process of translating their experiences to other languages.