The Discourse Functions of Antonyms in Faceless by Amma Darko

Abstract

This article investigates the discourse functions of antonymy in Amma Darko’s Faceless. It also explores the principles that govern the order of antonymous pairs in Faceless. The study is motivated by an observation, based on corpus data, that certain antonymous pairs co-occur in written data, and that they perform various discourse functions. There is also the argument that certain antonymous pairs tend to be used in a preferred sequence in the sentence. Data was collected from Amma Darko’s Faceless, a novel about the plight of street children in Ghana. The authors argue that in Faceless, antonymous pairs often co-occur within one word class and that these antonym pairs function differently to highlight some of the themes of the novel. The authors also argue that in the novel, antonym sequence is influenced by the following principles: idiomaticity and non-gender, chronology and positivity. Keywords: antonymy, antonymous pair, discourse function & themes