International Journal of Language & Literature

A Lexico-Semantic Reading of Chimamanda Adichie’sPurple Hibiscus
Ebi Yeibo, Comfort Akerele

Abstract
A key purpose for exploring the language of a text is to determine the extent to which a given author has organized and deployed its limitless potentials to encode or relate the intended message and social vision. With M.A.K. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, as the analytical template, this study, therefore, investigates aspects of lexico-semantic patterning in Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, such as simplicity of lexical choices, collocation, semantic fields, selectional restriction rule, category rule violation, imagery and lexical relations (i.e. synonymy), in order to establish their connotative implications and how they cohere in the text, to foreground the author’s artistic target, in conjunction with other linguistic elements and cultural and contextual variables. The study reveals that the construction of a literary text is a linguistically conscious activity, as the lexico-semantic nuances and dynamics of Adichie’s text explored are critical and strategic both stylo-rhetorically and in message delivery. It confirms the fact that the linguistic choices a writer makes from the plethora of options at his/her disposal are engendered by subject matter and context, as these twin elements choose their own variety of language.

Full Text: PDF      DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v3n2a15