Speech Style-Shifts in Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus

Abstract

The focus of this paper is on the use of speech style shifts by interactants in dialogues.Interlocutors engaged in verbal discourse employ different speech styles on different occasions.This is largely informed by the fact that no one speaks in exactly the same way on all occasions.Many factors inform these shifts such as the speaker, the addressee, the setting, the topic ofdiscourse and the purpose of discourse. Using Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, thisstudy seeks to identify the speech style shifts in the dialogues of the characters and themotivations for the shifts .It also seeks to determine the way the shifts affected the relationshipsbetween the characters as well as the power structures that are at play. To achieve theseobjectives, eight sample excerpts purposively selected from the text were used as data whileethnography of communication was used as the theoretical framework. Findings revealed that thedifferent speech style shifts identified were influenced mainly bythe situation and social distance.