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UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN

CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY

3.0 Introduction

This study primarily uses the CDA analytical approach to demonstrate how the language employed by Adichie in PH, HOAYS and AH has reinforced the concept of social solidarity and structural solidity in the novels. This chapter, therefore, provides clarifications on how Adichie’s deployment of insights from Halliday’s SFL, Fairclough’s model of CDA and Durkheim’s concept of social solidarity explicate discourse strategies that evoke social solidarity and enhance textual cohesion in the novels.

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to elucidate the functions of language for construing human experience. While logical ideational meta-function is concerned with the grammatical resources for building up grammatical units into complexes; experiential ideational meta-function, on the other hand, is considered as the grammatical choices that enable speakers to make meanings about the world around them and inside of them; it is through this process in which humans try to make meaning from their experiences that language is said to evolve.

Accordingly, ideational meta-function reflects the contextual value of ‘field’; the nature of the social process which language draws from. These descriptions are applied to account for the nominal and pronominal choices in the lexico-grammatical system in these novels to sieve elements in them that signify group identity. On the other hand, with the process types, specific interest is laid on the analysis of the grammatical resources through which the structures in the novels are cohesively construed.

And just like with ideational meta-function, interpersonal meta-function which relates to the text’s aspects of tenor or interactivity is used to unravel the speaker/ writer persona, social distance, and relative social status of the interactants in the novels. The speaker/writer persona concerns the stance and the personalisation of the speaker or writer. This aspect involves looking at whether the writer or speaker has a neutral attitude, which can be perceived through the use of language. Social distance, on the other hand, implies how close the speakers are; for instance, how the use of linguistic choices are influenced by the relationship between speakers. Relative social status, which is an aspect of social distance, focuses on speech acts in the relationship between the interlocutors involved in a dialogue. Textual meta-function, on the other hand, relates to the mode, the internal organisation and communicative networks of texts. The emphasis on textual interactivity is on disfluencies such as hesitations, pauses and repetitions in the textual politics of a text. Attention is, however, focused on the lexical density, grammatical complexity, coordinators and other structural features that have enhanced textual cohesion in the novels.

Using the above provisions, this study applies SFL’s linguistic insights to the macro-level of text analysis to account for how the meta-functions activate discursive elements in the selected extracts from the novels that evoked aspects of Durkheim’s social solidarity as discussed in Structural Functionalism. This is done with the motivations granted by CDA that language is a form of social practices; a means by which existing social relations are contested, and an avenue where different interests,

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such as solidarities, are also preserved and reproduced. Therefore, in order to account for aspects of social solidarity, this study aligns with CDA’s emphasis on the object of analysis; the processes by which the object is produced and received, the socio-historical conditions which govern the linguistic processes, the signifier that makes up the text, and the specific linguistic selections, their juxtapositioning, their sequencing, and their layout, which are a reflection of the contextual currents that instigate the selection of atypical lexical and grammatical features in these novels. Apparently, the selected extracts are considered as instantiations of literary regulated social discourses that demonstrate contextual variables like solidarity. Therefore, with insights from SFL, Adichie’s use of the nominal groups such as: ‘my family’, ‘my people’, ‘our house’, ‘my country’ and the plural pronouns such as: ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘them’, ‘they’ and ‘our’ and other nominal groups is therefore examined as linguistic choices that are contextually motivated to evoke solidarity in the linguistic network of these novels.

Furthermore, with insights from SFL, the macro analysis of the nominal groups designating social actors by membership categorisation is being made, and how the various parts of the society are held together by shared values and systems of exchanges which transpire in everyday human social interactions in these novels that suggest concern for solidarity. Analytical principles from CDA have provided substantial grounds to demonstrate the fact that, society is a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability; working together for solidarity and stability is embedded in the system of exchanges used by social actors in their interactions. Apparently, the use of collective pronouns such as: ‘we’, ‘they’, ‘them’, and ‘us’ by social actors elucidates the bonds of solidarity and stability existing among members.

With micro-level of analysis, insights from SFL’s syntactic analysis of the lexical and grammatical properties are used to account for the ties in the lexical and grammatical properties that have enhanced textual cohesion in the selected novels. Using SFL’s model of linguistic analysis, the lexical elements chosen for syntactic analysis are reiterations and collocation of words and sentences at the intra and inter-sentential levels. The grammatical constituents analysed, on the other hand, include SFL’s concepts of reference, conjunction, ellipsis, and substitution in the novels. The application of the lexico-grammatical strata provides explanations that elucidate the meta-functions of language; the generalised uses of language to which CDA uses SFL’s attempts to account for the social practices in language use.

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Though there are many directions in the study and critique of solidarity, the essence in the use of this approach is to unravel how the textual networks of literary discourses re-enact various aspects of social solidarity from the interactions of social actors that operate in the texts. Consequently, social solidarity is examined from the perspective of being the resultant effects of the various linguistic re-enactments, like the use of nominal and pronominal groups that explicate group cohesion. Apparently, show of solidarity may involve the direct enactment, overt pronouncements, or support among others in the use of nominal and pronouns that project identification to one’s group.

Given the above background, this attempt to sieve social solidarity by using critical discourse analytical methods concentrate on the various discourse strategies, and or lexical and grammatical features of a text or communicative event analysed on the premises of critical discourse analysis as having exhibited the various tenets of solidarity or group cohesion.