NEGATING AS A CRITICAL STYLISTIC FEATURE IN KAINE AGARY’S YELLOW-YELLOW

Abstract

This paper examines Kiane Agary’s Yellow-Yellow from a linguistic perspective. The objectives include to identify and describe the hypothetical worlds created in the texts, the linguistic features used in creating such nonexistent worlds and the ideologies promoted in the text through the creation of such nonexistent worlds. Drawing on Jefferies’s (2010) Critical Stylistic model, this paper utilizes one textual-conceptual function, namely: negating to examine few extracts purposively sampled from the text. Findings show that the various nonexistent worlds identified in the corpus studied include the natives’ expectation of the media to herald police brutality of youths in the region, the natives’ desire for good education and better life for their children, provision of family needs by the Niger Delta men and the youths’ willingness to sacrifice their lives for the emancipation of the region. These non-existent worlds are constructed through negating which is realised syntactically, lexically and morphologically in the text. Through the critical stylistic tool of negating, the ideologies of environmentalism, justice, activism and patriarchy are foregrounded. Unveiling the ideologies residing in the text explains the reasons behind the creation of the non-existent worlds used by the author to improve the story.