Style as the Man Itself: Focus on Language Strategy in Five Selected Nigerian Dramas

Abstract

Style as the Man Itself: Focus on Language Strategy in Five Selected Nigerian Dramas’ namely Charles Okwelume’s Babel of Voices, Diet of Violence, Toni Duruaku’s Cash Price, Femi Osofisan’s Midnight Blackout and Wole Soyinka’s The Beatification of Area Boy. It also examines the playwrights’ emerging trends on the stylistic peculiarities of the selected texts. The impacts focus on the linguistic tongue of these three major ethnic tribes in Nigeria (Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba) as reflected in the playwrights’ choice of words or diction. The findings review the relevance of exposing audience to other native languages/dialects of the peoples of Nigeria. These x-ray prospects and challenges of these ethnic languages/dialects not going into extinction as envisaged. The research method leans on literary works to interpret these dramas while Stylistic approach is deployed to unraveled the intent of these works built in theoretical framework that are subjected to empiricism, criticism and writers’ lenses to the society where these texts originate meant to communicate these topical issues that are controversial.