Volume 21, Issue 2 (September 2021)

Abstract

In The Shadow King, Maaza Mengiste presents war as more than a conflict between human beings. Set against Italy's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, the novel represents land, weather, rivers, stones, plants, and animals as active participants in resistance and survival. Using qualitative textual analysis and Halliday's transitivity framework, this study examines how grammatical choices shape this relationship between humans and the environment. Fifteen representative clauses were purposively selected from passages where environmental entities interact with human characters during conflict, survival, or resistance, ensuring coverage across process types and environmental categories. The analysis shows that non-human entities frequently occupy grammatical positions usually associated with human participants, functioning as Actors and Sensers rather than passive elements of the setting. Across the selected clauses, a consistent pattern emerges: the Ethiopian landscape becomes an active force in resistance rather than a mere backdrop. This also complicates conventional understandings of colonial violence, which becomes not just domination of human bodies but an attempt to reduce land from Actor to object, from living relation to extractable resource. By bringing ecolinguistic analysis into dialogue with postcolonial literary studies, the study shows how grammar itself participates in meaning-making about human survival, more-than-human participation, and freedom from colonial control.

Archetype is a universal mode of being which is often recognized as recurrent among humans in different times and culture. It was applied in psychology as a recurrent pattern among human in psychiatric cases. It was later developed into a lager behavioural concept in arts and that identifies and classifies social similarities into common universal patterns. From existing literature, archetype has been studies as the form and the recurrency of the literary motif. Yet, not much attention is given to its prototypical nature which continues to yield critically to original object or pattern for other models of generalization. From Carl Jung’s Archetype and the collective unconscious, this paper interrogates the image of the woman in three recurrent motifs- the famme fatale, the Penelope and the Aphrodite in Amu-Anadi’s A Field of Echoes. Although, the image of the woman has been investigated in many African novels, not much attention has been given to the image focusing on these archetypal models., The paper however, examines the images as universal models foregrounded in archetypal criticism.

In The Shadow King, Maaza Mengiste presents war as more than a conflict between human beings. Set against Italy's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, the novel represents land, weather, rivers, stones, plants, and animals as active participants in resistance and survival. Using qualitative textual analysis and Halliday's transitivity framework, this study examines how grammatical choices shape this relationship between humans and the environment. Fifteen representative clauses were purposively selected from passages where environmental entities interact with human characters during conflict, survival, or resistance, ensuring coverage across process types and environmental categories. The analysis shows that non-human entities frequently occupy grammatical positions usually associated with human participants, functioning as Actors and Sensers rather than passive elements of the setting. Across the selected clauses, a consistent pattern emerges: the Ethiopian landscape becomes an active force in resistance rather than a mere backdrop. This also complicates conventional understandings of colonial violence, which becomes not just domination of human bodies but an attempt to reduce land from Actor to object, from living relation to extractable resource. By bringing ecolinguistic analysis into dialogue with postcolonial literary studies, the study shows how grammar itself participates in meaning-making about human survival, more-than-human participation, and freedom from colonial control.

Archetype is a universal mode of being which is often recognized as recurrent among humans in different times and culture. It was applied in psychology as a recurrent pattern among human in psychiatric cases. It was later developed into a lager behavioural concept in arts and that identifies and classifies social similarities into common universal patterns. From existing literature, archetype has been studies as the form and the recurrency of the literary motif. Yet, not much attention is given to its prototypical nature which continues to yield critically to original object or pattern for other models of generalization. From Carl Jung’s Archetype and the collective unconscious, this paper interrogates the image of the woman in three recurrent motifs- the famme fatale, the Penelope and the Aphrodite in Amu-Anadi’s A Field of Echoes. Although, the image of the woman has been investigated in many African novels, not much attention has been given to the image focusing on these archetypal models., The paper however, examines the images as universal models foregrounded in archetypal criticism.

This study is a literary analysis of the performance and song texts of Mgboko Umuanunu, Ngwa, women’s wing, Ilishan, Ogun State. It draws on performance theory and examines the songs' functions. The paper reveals that the songs embody life-guiding principles for society and harmonious marital relationships. It further shows that the songs performed by the women's group are poetic as they utilize imagery, metaphor, and other figures of speech. The performance and songs foreground the role women play in society and families as builders. The study concludes that though the songs of Mgboko Umuanunu, Ngwa women’s wing, Ilishan, Ogun State have entertainment and cultural values, they embody elements of literature and are a means of inculcating godly virtues in society and ensuring the sacredness of the marriage institution. Keywords: Mgboko Umuanunu women’s wing, performance, songs, poems, figures of speech

This study examines the psychology of criminality in F. O. Orabueze’s Men Behind the Masks, with particular attention to the motivations and behavioural patterns of characters involved in criminal activities. While previous studies of the text have examined its Marxist, mythological, linguistic and stylistic dimensions, this study focuses on the relationship between individual motivations and dysfunctional social structures. Anchored in Robert K. Merton’s strain theory, the study employs qualitative textual analysis to examine how socially prescribed goals, particularly the pursuit of wealth and social status, interact with unequal opportunities and institutional corruption to encourage deviant responses. The analysis reveals that criminal behaviour in the novel arises from diverse motivations, including economic deprivation, greed, vengeance, thrill-seeking, exploitation, altruism, lust and the pursuit of social recognition. Keally’s criminality, for instance, is connected to poverty, unemployment and unequal access to legitimate opportunities, while the corrupt conduct of public officials demonstrates how criminality extends beyond the economically disadvantaged. The study argues that Orabueze presents criminality as both an individual and structural phenomenon. It concludes that dysfunctional social institutions, economic inequality, corruption and the unequal distribution of opportunities can create conditions conducive to criminal behaviour.

This study examines the denial of female autonomy in Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues, focusing on “My Last Duchess,” “The Laboratory,” “Andrea del Sarto,” and “Porphyria’s Lover.” It argues that possession in these poems emerges from a desire to restrict, appropriate, or eliminate women’s capacity to exercise independent desires, choices, and identities. While existing readings of Browning’s dramatic monologues have explored gender, jealousy, violence, sexuality, marriage, and psychological conflict, the relationship between the denial of female autonomy and the possessive exercise of power requires further comparative attention. Drawing on Feminist Literary Theory, the study employs qualitative textual analysis to examine how the speakers respond to women whose autonomy challenges their desires, expectations, or authority. The analysis reveals that possession takes different forms across the poems, including marital control, artistic appropriation, emotional domination, sexual possessiveness, and retaliatory violence. It further demonstrates that Browning presents possessive desire as deeply connected to the refusal to recognise women as autonomous subjects. The study concludes that the poems expose the psychological and violent consequences of transforming female autonomy into an obstacle to be controlled rather than a condition to be respected.

War literature has continued to generate different critical arguments that validate the use of war and trauma narratives as important instruments for social reform. The emergence of war literature has created a link between history and fiction. This essay, explicates the traumatic suffering of characters in the selected novels. The avoidable wars that the novels fictionalize chronicle different levels of suffering and devastation that people went through in the historic war. The trauma theory conceptualized by Cathy Caruth was adopted in this research. This approach allows the flow of a proper psychoanalytical discourse to take place. It also propels the ideas of traumatic suffering to a level of critical understanding of literary values of the text. This research looks at the concept of tragic suffering and trauma holistically. Qualitative method of textual engagements enables this research to arrive at the conclusion that the characters in novels are traumatized by tragic suffering and devastating they experience during the different civil wars. In conclusion, this research implicitly, argues that civil war should be avoided because war brings different types of pains, torture, tragic sufferings and trauma.

The strong nexus between memory and Caribbean literature is linked to the testimony of their past collective experiences. A close reading of Andrea Levy’s Fruit of the Lemon (1999) and The Long Song (2010) reveals significant correspondences between the collective slave experiences of the Afro-Caribbeans and the individual experiences of their descendants in the contemporaneity. Such experiential reverberation informs on the reality of racial memory; a broad term that captures an individual’s racial heritage. It can also be construed as a signification for repressed identities and repressed fulfilments of a group of people. Studies within this intellectual spectrum have served to preserve and propagate the memory of trauma that accompanied the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the Plantation experience. Memory is expressed through testimonies which evoke control over past experiences and its associated trauma. This paper argues that collective healing and redemption can be achieved through deliberate testimonies. Hinged on Carl Jung’s psychoanalysis, the study examines how traumatic pasts influence writing which often initiates a healthy expression of collective repressed fulfilments. This paper foregrounds the roles deliberate testimonies play in asserting the legitimacy of racial memory in reclaiming the sanity of a repressed race and in the liberation of the self.

This study presents a pragmatic analysis of Psalm 35, an imprecatory psalm traditionally attributed to David, focusing on how language communicates meaning within its socio-religious context. The study is principally anchored in Searle’s (1969) Speech Act Theory, which provides a framework for identifying and interpreting the communicative functions of the psalmist’s utterances. Deixis, presupposition, implicature and relevance are employed as complementary pragmatic concepts to account for contextual reference, background assumptions, implied meanings and contextual interpretation. The analysis shows that Psalm 35 functions beyond lament as a strategic discourse in which the psalmist petitions God for justice, asserts personal innocence, and condemns hostile opponents. Directive speech acts predominate in appeals for divine intervention, while expressive acts convey emotional distress, indignation and trust in God. Deictic expressions establish relational distinctions among the psalmist, God and the enemies, reinforcing the opposition between the righteous sufferer and the wicked. Presuppositions concerning divine justice, righteousness and covenant faithfulness provide the assumptions underlying the petitions, while implicatures strengthen the moral and theological case against the enemies. The study further demonstrates that imprecatory expressions function primarily as rhetorical appeals for divine judgment rather than direct calls for personal revenge. Thus, Searle’s framework, complemented by pragmatic concepts, demonstrates how Psalm 35 achieves its communicative, persuasive and theological purposes.

Online political discourse following high-stakes presidential elections in deeply polarised post-colonial democracies often degenerates into hyper-partisanship and severe incivility, yet the underlying socio-cognitive and sociolinguistic mechanisms driving these aggressive digital linguistic attacks remain under-scrutinised. Addressing this gap, this study empirically investigates the pragmatic features and socio-political functions of impoliteness in online user comments responding to media reports declaring the winner of the 2019 Nigerian presidential election on Sahara Reporters. Adopting a qualitative socio-cognitive approach grounded in Jonathan Culpeper’s (2011) pragmatic impoliteness framework, a working corpus of 180 comments organised into 25 interactional frames was purposively sampled and systematically analysed through frame-based discourse modelling. Findings reveal that insults specifically personalised negative references, third-person negative references, and negative vocatives dominated the dataset. These were strategically combined with unpalatable questions, presuppositions, condescension, silencers, and indirect threats, operating primarily through both coercive and affective impoliteness, alongside entertaining impoliteness deployed for majoritarian triumphalism. Crucially, the study’s primary contribution to knowledge demonstrates that impoliteness in computer-mediated political discourse extends far beyond routine conversational friction or interpersonal incivility. Rather, it functions as a strategic vehicle for weaponised historical memory, ethno-regional identity construction, institutional delegitimisation, and the socio-cognitive pathologisation of political dissent. Ultimately, the paper illuminates how digital comment sections serve as volatile, contested socio-political arenas where majoritarian hegemonies, ethno-political affiliations, and democratic legitimacy are continuously negotiated, enforced, and resisted.

The rapid growth of social media has transformed how internet slang is created, shared, and adapted, making semantic change and cross-cultural linguistic diffusion faster than ever. This study examines how selected internet slang expressions develop new meanings and social significance as they move across generational and cultural boundaries. Drawing on Agha’s theory of enregisterment, the study uses a qualitative multiple-case design to analyse ten widely recognised slang expressions, including rizz, brain rot, no cap, slay, delulu, simp, and algospeak. Data were drawn from peer-reviewed studies, lexicographic records, media reports, and documented examples of online language use. The analysis identifies three recurring stages: initial enregisterment, circulation, and re-enregisterment or de-enregisterment. Through these processes, slang expressions acquire new meanings, identities, and functions as they move beyond their communities of origin. The findings show that social media platforms and algorithmic moderation accelerate linguistic innovation by enabling rapid diffusion and semantic reinterpretation. However, mainstream adoption can also obscure expressions' cultural origins and raise concerns about linguistic appropriation. The study concludes that internet slang reflects the interaction of language, identity, technology, and power, while digital platforms increasingly shape how meanings develop and spread.