Chimamanda Ngozi Research Articles

Transliteration in Selected Nigerian Novels and The Discourse in Traditional Ceremonies in Urhobo And Ukwani

The study investigates the use and importance of transliteration in selected Nigerian novels as well as the discourse in traditional ceremonies such as marriage and funeral in Urhobo and Ukwuani in Delta State. Unlike in literary works where some works have been done in transliteration, none has been carried out on the English used in traditional ceremonies. Even in literary works, studies on transliteration are mostly aimed at how English is "domesticated" to reflect African culture. None of the studies has actually specified what aspects of African culture each transliterated expression reflects. Owing to this gap in literature, this work aims at providing a socio-linguistic explanations for the special linguistic choices made in Achebe's Arrow of God, Anthills of the Savannah, Chimamanda Ngozi, Adichie's Purple Hibiscus and in traditional ceremonies. The theoritical framework adopted for the study is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis of communication accomodation, which attempts to explain the relationship between language and the interpretation of social reality. Data were sourced from the novels and the speeches of spokesmen in marriage and funeral ceremonies of heterogeneous nature and were analysed through descriptive method. The following research questions guided the analysis: i. Are there defining characteristics that determine the English used in the novels and the traditional ceremonies? ii. Are there similarities between the language used in the novels and the ones used in the traditional ceremonies? iii. Is the variety of English used relevant to African culture? iv. What specific aspects of African culture do the linguistic choices made reflect? The findings from the study show that the expressions identified reflect and promote African culture. The findings also show that there are similarities between the language of the novels and that of traditional ceremonies.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Not a Single Story

This paper highlights the skeptical narrative treatment of history in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987). My argument builds on the main concepts of narrative hegemony, power, and resistance through multiplicitous and authentic storytelling as described by Chimamanda Ngozi’s book and Ted Talk The Danger of a Single Story applied to the novel. Ngozi’s concept of the danger of a single story maintains that there is a kind of discourse behind the homogenisation of history; that discourse of relying on only one version of the past. I analyse how the danger of telling and believing a single story can be seen through Toni Morrison’s characters’ personal voices and narrative resources such as storytelling. I use the following ideas from Ngozi for this purpose: stories are incomplete, stories can heal, and stories exist because of power; power over history, and power over women. This paper, thus, seeks to analyse and illustrate the multiplicity of stories and voices within history by examining Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

LINGUISTIC REPRESENTATION OF RELIGIOUS IDENTITY AND IDEOLOGY IN SELECTED POSTCOLONIAL NIGERIAN LITERATURE

One of the greatest threats to national development and the rights of individuals and groups in Nigeria and some parts of Africa is the growing increase in religious fundamentalism by major religions in the continent. The worsening economic fortunes of many African countries, poor and corrupt leadership, the increase in ethnic nationalism, oppression of the minority by dominant powers and ideologies, external influences from extremist groups (Islamic and Christian), among others, have been suggested as likely causes of religious fundamentalism in Africa. The postcolonial Nigerian nation has suffered calamitous losses from religious conflicts. Consequently, some of Nigeria’s 21st century writers have tried in their works to present a situation in which groups use language to construct individual and collective identities and ideologies, legitimise their actions and justify acts of violence against others. The grammatical resource of mood and transitivity employed by the writers in the text under consideration enables them to represent individual and group experiences as well as intergroup relations in social interactions. Therefore, working within the tenets of critical stylistics (CS) and critical discourse analysis (CDA), this study aims to expose the ideological motivations that underlie the expression of religious discourses in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, Chidubem Iweka’s The Ancient Curse and Uwem Akpan’s Luxurious Hearses and their implications for national stability and development. The data reveal that the sociopolitical climate in postcolonial Nigeria breeds a culture of hatred, intolerance, violence, exclusion and curtailment of individual and group rights in the name of religion and these acts are expressed in diverse discourse-grammatical patterns.