Beyond Semantic Opposition: Contextual Opposites in Osundare’s The Eye Of The Earth

Khabyr Alowonle Fasasi

doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.11n.5p.48

Abstract

Lexical semanticists have categorized linguistic items based on their perceived relationships and have come up with the category termed semantic oppositions to describe words that share certain contrastive features. Consequently, certain categories of semantic oppositions have been documented in the literature. The current research argues that a certain type of opposition termed contextual opposition has not been accounted for. Resting on Teun van Dijk’s (2006) socio-cognitive theory of context, this paper probes into the types of opposites found in Niyi Osundare’s poetry, The Eye of the Earth with a view to accounting for the nature of relationships existing between certain pairs of opposites. In addition to the various types of semantic opposites in the text, analysis reveals the presence of a new type of opposites termed ‘contextual opposites’ (opposition conferred on the linguistic items by context). Findings reveal that contextual oppositions (or pragmatic oppositions) designate a relationship in which words, phrases and larger expressions which ordinarily do not share any linguistic relationship of contrast or incompatibility are forced to appear as opposites as a result of their contextual contradictory semantics and syntactic ordering. The paper concludes that current categorisation of opposition in English should incorporate contextual oppositions rather than limiting such to the traditional lens of lexical semantics.

Highlights

Born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti in southwest Nigeria, Osundare is recognized as a prolific poet, dramatist, essayist, and literary critic
Findings reveal that contextual oppositions designate a relationship in which words, phrases and larger expressions which ordinarily do not share any linguistic relationship of contrast or incompatibility are forced to appear as opposites as a result of their contextual contradictory semantics and syntactic ordering
While the semantically opposite relationships occur between linguistic items that share certain contrasts along a line of relations, contextual opposites designate two lexical items, phrases or larger constructions which do not normally share any linguistic relationship and are not ordinarily considered as lexical opposites but which have been brought into contrast by the context of the discourse

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti in southwest Nigeria, Osundare is recognized as a prolific poet, dramatist, essayist, and literary critic. The current research takes a departure from the previous studies because it is concerned with understanding certain lexical and phrasal choices the poet has made in one of his poems, The Eye of the Earth with a view to determining the relations of those linguistic items to one another. Scholars in the area of semantics have categorized lexical items relationally and have come up with the traditional category of opposition (antonym) and its types. It occurs to us from recent observation that a certain class of oppositions which we may refer to as contextual opposition has not been accounted for by scholars. It is hoped that the task will yield novel and revealing insights that will lead to a novel categorisation of opposites, one that will rely on insights from both semantic and pragmatics

CATEGORISING SEMANTIC OPPOSITIONS IN ENGLISH

Complementaries alternatives within a given domain

THE ROLE OF CONTEXT IN MEANING MAKING

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

CONCLUSIONS