Language in Literature: A Stylistic Analysis of Dennis Brutus’ “After Exile”

Abstract

Considering the diversity of opinions, ideas and/or points of view on stylistic analysis of literary texts,one sees the need to bring to the fore proper examination of grammar, lexis, semantic as well as phonologicalproperties and discursive devices employ by stylistians in any textual analysis. This paper which focused onLanguage in Literature: A Stylistic Analysis of Dennis Brutus’ “After Exile” aimed at bringing to the forecourt theuse of linguistic patterns and their communicative functions embedded in African literary discourse as well as theirlinguistic involvements. The study, which is anchored on the theory of literary stylistics, drew on the models andterminologies provided by relevant aspects of linguistics which delight in the violation/breaching of linguisticnorms – a deliberate deviation from the use of language code. In this paper, the researcher examined various tenetsof stylistics such as foregrounding, category rule violation, selectional restriction rule, reduplication/patternrepetition, paradigmatic and syntagmatic association, parallelism, word choice/diction and sentence patterns.