Pragmatic analysis of extracts from Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives

Abstract

This article investigates the idiosyncrasies of Shoneyin in her text, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. Some portions of Shoneyin’s text were identified as sample data for analysis. The researcher made use of the theory of speech acts and implicature, propounded by Grice to investigate and analyse the text. The study shows that Shoneyin has employed a brilliant style with various sentence types to sustain readers’ interests and maintains originality to the work. The language used by the writer is quite explicit and “vulgar” for example “grapped my breasts”, “forced his penis” etc. The study assesses the pragmatic idiosyncrasies as uniqueness and not as deviances. Generally, Shoneyin’s use of language in these two texts is point blank, which may be considered as vulgar. She presents her ideas in explicit terms and her choice of words is deliberate. The study concludes that Shoneyin’s choice of words are distinctive.