A PRAGMA-STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF NIYI OSUNDARE’S THE STA

Abstract

Language users often manipulate and violate the norms of language in a bid to reflect their actual thoughts, opinions and feelings in a speech event. This study is an exploration of foregrounding as a linguistic and stylistic device in Niyi Osundare’sThe State Visit. The paper examines how NiyiOsundare, strategically deploys and manipulates language norms by foregrounding some elements of the play to achieve certain pragmatic effect. The study is hinged on Halliday’ssystemic functional linguistic theory (Halliday, & Mathiessen, 2013) and Grice’s cooperative principles (1975) framework. With the use of qualitative descriptive research method, the study identifies some lexical choices and syntactic structures employed by Osundare to insightfully explore some socio-political problems of corruption, autocracy, poverty, insincerity, and immorality of most African leaders. By employing pragma-stylistic tools, the study sheds light on the interplay of style and pragmatics in capturing the socio-political themes of the play. The study concludes that through the use of foregrounding as a stylistic and linguistic device, the author has successfully exposed the tribulations of autocratic leadership and its eventual outcome of poverty, corruption, oppression and immorality that has resulted in social, emotional, and psychological annihilation of the masses in an aesthetic and memorable manner.