EXPERIENTIAL MEANING IN CHIMAMANDA ADICHIE’S PURPLE HIBISCUS: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

This paper explored language use in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. The aimis to describe the experiential meaning of the text and how Adichie’s Lexico-grammaticalchoices reflect her experiences and worldviews of the post-colonial Nigeria. The study adoptedHalliday’s Transitivity Model of the systemic functional Linguistic (SFL) to analyze clauses.Textual data comprises excerpts purposively drawn from the novel. Clauses were identified,classified according to the participant-process-circumstance elements of the transitivity. Datawere analyzed based on the principles of the transitivity model of SFL. The study revealed thatAdichie utilized majority material processes to represent the actions, events, happenings anddoings of Papa Eugene Achike. Again, that transitivity is a viable tool to reflect theme. Thepaper concludes that the lexico-grammatical choices of transitivity in the novel under studyhelped in the interpretation of the experiential meanings.