The Significance of Ijaw Linguistic Features in Ebi Yeibo's The Fourth Masquerade

Abstract

Stylistics is a branch of linguistic studies, which uses the linguistic features in analysing literary texts and other works of art. Stylistics is also seen as the academic study of styles, where a scholar can look at the language and style of any author he chooses to study. This research work looks at the Ijaw linguistic features Ebi Yeibo employs in The Fourth Masquerade to send his intended messages to his readers. The work's title is The Significance of the Ijaw Linguistic Features in Ebi Yeibo's The Fourth Masquerade. The Ijaw linguistic features are identified and interpreted to the readers. The theoretical frameworks chosen as guides to the study are: Leo Spitzer's Philological Circle and Geoffrey N. Leech's Style as Deviation models. The study adopts the Qualitative Approach as the methodology because it is interpretative, descriptive, analytic and evaluative in nature. The aim of the study is to project the fact that code-mixing and code- switching are veritable linguistic tools in a language contact situation. The data of the study is collected through primary and secondary sources, which include: the careful reading of the primary texts, excerpts from a personal interview with the author, and comments from other critics. The work is significant to both researchers, scholars, critics and the society in general because it reveals that an analysis of a literary text from a linguistic standpoint is possible. The study explicates that Yeibo uses lexical borrowings, Ijaw idioms/proverbs, native rhetorical patterns, semantic extension and dislocation, etc. to address the themes of corruption, oppression, poverty, protest, bureaucratic inefficiency of government and institutional and moral decay of the Niger Delta.