ENCODING EXPERIENCE IN HELON HABILA’S OIL ON WATER: A CRITICAL STYLISITC STUDY

Abstract

There is a prevalence of corruption, violence, exploitation and ecological devastation in Helon Habila’s Oil on Water. These afore-mentioned vices are portrayed through the use of dialogic, significations, symbolisms and narrations—howbeit—aided by sentential enaction of actions, events and state. Thus, this paper seeks to holistically examine the representations of actions, events and state in Helon Habila’s Oil on Water. To do this, Jeffrey’s (2010) critical stylistics model which centres on the investigation of underlying ideologies within a text or an utterance is the foundation upon which the study was premised, with emphasis on the Hallidiyan’s Transitivity Model—thus forming its theoretical framework. With this framework, Habila’s use of the processes of transitivity to highlight the subject of corruption, violence and exploitation as entrenched in the society. The method of analysis used was the textual analysis. Twelve excerpts were extracted from Helon Habila’s Oil on Water with focus on his choice of lexical items within a syntactic construction. This aided in the explication of how actions, events and states are represented in the text. From the findings, it was concluded that Habila’s lexical choices reflect the four processes of the transivity model; Material process, verbalisation, mental process and relational process. Through these processes, his ideologies which, primarily, is the indictment of the government and oil companies in the exploitation of the people are not just well represented but have within them the potential to be impressed upon the readers.