A STYLISTIC- ACCOMMODATIONIST ANALYSIS OF ADICHIE’S LANGUAGE USE IN HALF OF A YELLOW SUN

Abstract

This paper attempted a stylistic – accommodationist analysis of Adichie’sHalf of a Yellow Sun. Half of a Yellow Sun is a symbol of the Biafra flag which reminded us of the Nigeria Biafra war that engulfed the nation which led to the pogrom-great and planned massacre of the Igbo in 1967. Many writers had written about this war but Chimamanda’s work attracted more readers and interest that many people were asking whether her topic was new. This was as a result of her style as an accommodationist. In order to x-ray her style and her level of accommodation, the accommodation theory propounded by Howard Giles in 1971 formed the theoretical model. The data was got through purposeful sampling and was analyzed using the model developed by the researcher known as Genspecters which is a blend formed from the first three letters of general, first three letters of specific, and the last four letters of characters. Generally, Adichie’s language use (style) was seen to be as simple as ‘a’ ‘b’ ‘c’. This was what attracted more readers to her work. Again she was seen to accommodate all categories of people in the society through her convergence and divergence stance and hence her accommodationist stance. Some recommendations were made which included that writers and communicators should make their language of literary expression as simple as possible so as to enable them to pass their messages across to their readers. In conclusion, Adichie distinguished herself from other literary writers because of her unique, idiosyncratic use of language (style). It was this peculiar manner of language manipulation that made her famous. Some conclusions were drawn and recommendations made