A Stylo-Linguistic Study of Orality Markers in Selected Novels of Femi Ojo-Ade and Ramonu Sanusi

Abstract

Orality is a feature of oral literature that has found its way into the written form of literature owing to stylistic effects and the need to foreground certain messages and aspects of texts. Ojo-Ade’s Les paradis terrestres (Paradis) and Les rêves d’une fille (Rêves), as well as Sanusi’s Le bistouri des larmes (Bistouri) and Un nègre a violé une blonde à Dallas (Nègre), have been studied thematically and stylistically by critics over the years, with less attention paid to the oral stylo-linguistic nature texts. Hence, this study investigates orality markers in the selected novels with the adoption of close reading for the collection of data and Arnold’s theory of foregrounding, which specialise in answering questions on literary motifs and how they come to gain prominence in texts as framework. Exclamatory remarks in sentential forms as well as repetitions through reiteration and syntactic parallelism, are identified as orality adding musicality and aesthetics to the texts while foregrounding the novelists’ thematic concerns. The research concludes on the premise that orality markers perform stylistic and aesthetic functions before readers interacting with the texts, making the reception of writers’ messages on socio-linguistic, socio-political, socio-economic, and socio-cultural harsh realities less gruesome.