AN ANALYSIS OF ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS IN ERNEST-SAMUEL’S EPISTOLARY NOVELS: DEAR KELECHI AND ITS SEQUEL

Abstract

Pragmatic illocution deals with communication in well-formed utterances, whereby the language users must understand one another in other to encode and decode locutions and once the speaker or the writer performs with the words, it sends signals to the hearer or the reader with appropriate meaning, especially in solving the issues on negative response from the hearer or the reader. The novel analysed with this work was Dear Kelechi, an epistolary written by a friend Iheoma to her bosom friend Kelechi. The work extensively used the four Grice’s Cooperative Principles as the theory applied in analysing the research questions raised and the data were analysed based on textual analysis guided by the research questions with its finding of the writer used the illocutionary effects in creating a new raised world to the receiver. Finally, well-articulated illocution must produce a positive thought especially in return.