Over the years, linguists have variously defined language according to their degrees of experiences and exposures but its basic social and aesthetic functions have remained unchanged – the communicative function. The elementary or primary function of language is therefore to facilitate communication among persons. 

This research seeks to compare language use in Pita Dumbrok‟s Prison by Ken Saro Wiwa and Oil on WATERby Helon Habila. It examines the lexico-grammatical options in the selected texts, using Hallidayan notions of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Text, in this context, is a multilayered and multi-dimensional semiotic interactionconstructed through a complex interlocking set of lexicogrammatical options. Meaning is a paramount process in decoding message of any communicative exchange. It sustains or maintains the communicative exchange and lubricates the channel of communication (Firth 1957:104).

The functions and uses of language are defined by the specific social context which varies from domain to domain. However, the language choice of an individual is an index of social, political, economic and cultural classification. Crystal and Davy (1969:5) posit that “a particular social situation makes us respond with an appropriate variety of language”. Lakoff and Johnson (1999:82) say that “language emerges out of the kind of experiences we have with our bodies and physical environment”. The study of style in language is rooted in the “use” aspect of language and attention is given to specific social factors that necessitate the linguistic choices made by language users in specific social contexts. Eggins (1994:9) summarises the relationship that holds between language and context thus: 

Our ability to deduce context to predict when and how language use will vary, and the ambiguity of language removed from its context, all  provide evidence that in asking functional questions about language we must focus on not just language, but on language use in context.

This study focuses on the linguistic choices made by the authors (Ken Saro-Wiwa and Helon Habila) as well as investigating the situations that informed such variety of language use. It is obvious that the authors (Ken Saro-Wiwa and Helon Habila) have foregrounded certain linguistic items in order to produce specific effects on the target audience. This is so because the readability of a text is defined by how effectively a writer‟s linguistic choice matches with the situational context where the text originates.

In this study, we will pay precise attention to and compare language use and the linguistic features in Ken Saro-Wiwa‟s Pita Dumbrok‟s Prison and Helon Habila‟s Oil on WATER, drawing inspirations from the systemic textualinguistic model. The preoccupation of systemic textualinguistics is based on the assumption that language is structured to perform three functions simultaneously: ideational, interpersonal and textual functions. 

1.1 The Novel and Stylistics

               Literature is an imaginative work of art which is a mirror/a reflection of life or human experience put in writing as prose, drama or poetry (Ahmed & Odiwo, 1999:7).  It is the fictional representation of the world of consciousness. Yet, literary texts are produced under certain historical, social, cultural and political circumstances and they tend to reflect these circumstances.  Literature is the record of the condition of man as the writer views it. The source of themes, characters and even the events we find in literary works is about the society.  Creative writers often represent both their individual experiences and the collective experiences of their societies in their writings.

A literary work can thus provide an in-depth depiction of the cultural, social, religious, economic and political outlook of a people. There has been a recent growing interest in the stylistic analysis of the African novel, for instance Ngara, (1982), Uzoma, (2010), Nnadi, (2010), Nweze, (2012), and Lar, (2018). This work explores Ken Saro-Wiwa‟s Pita

Dumbrok‟s Prison and Helon Habila‟s Oil on WATER from a Linguistic Stylistics perspective and compares the language use in them.

      1.2       Contemporary Nigerian Novel and the Nigerian Society

Some contemporary Nigerian novelists have, in their focus,released the traumas of the current situation of starvation, torture, oil spillage, environmental pollution, HIV and AIDS, murder, cultural odds, religious and political problems, kidnapping as well as impersonation as their pivots. They paint the pictures of pain and deprivation, oppression and intimidation by the Nigerian elites and the bourgeois in their stories. Theseimages mentioned above penetrate the hearts of the readers and leaving questions that often trail their minds such as:

Why are we so depressed and oppressed by the oppressors? Is there no joy in our existence? Why are we so devastated?

The modern-day novelists write to critique, correct and redeem the images of the Nigerian society and they focus on the true condition of the country. The current Nigerian novel is based on present-day human issues and experiences in the Nigerian society in order to remain relevant.One fundamental characteristic of the modern Nigerian novel is that it provides a specific manner of narration which identifies and assume human names in such a way that suggests that they are to be regarded as individuals in the society. These novelists reveal social cohesion or social consciousness as they also reveal new interests and

experiences in their crafts of fiction. 

Thecurrent fiction writers in Nigeria are producing artistic works that show that Nigeria had her own history, culture and civilisation. These writers apply power of their works to initiate a political and economic reorganisation of the society in the interest of the oppressed. The writers reflect the societal ideological content, and use satire and ridicule as corrective measures as well as narrative techniques to enlighten the society morally.

      1.3       Bio-sketch of the Writers

The bio-sketch of the authors is significant to the study in that the writers‟ background directly or indirectly affects the language use and the messages the writers pass across.

      1.4       Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Background

Kenule Benson Tsaro-Wiwa (Ken Saro-Wiwa) was born on 10^th October 1941 in Bonny, Eastern Nigeria. He was the son of Chief J.B. Wiwa, a civil servant, and Widu Wiwa, a trader and farmer. He was educated at Government College, Umuahia and received his Higher School Certificate in 1961 and taught for a while at Government College. 

In 1962, he was admitted to the University of Ibadan. Saro-Wiwa graduated in 1965. He taught for a term at Stella Maris‟ College, Port Harcourt, and in 1966, he returned to teach at Government College, Umuahia.Ken Saro Wiwa was a Nigerian author, television producer, environmental activist, and winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1995. Saro-Wiwa was a member of the Ogoni people, an ethnic minority in Nigeria whose homeland, Ogoniland, in the Niger Delta has been targeted for crude oil extraction in the 1950s and which has suffered environmental damage from decades of indiscriminate petroleum waste dumping. Initially as a spokesperson and as President of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Saro-Wiwa led a nonviolent campaign against environmental degradation of the land and waters of Ogoniland by the operations of the multinational petroleum industries, especially Shell Company. He was also an outspoken critic of the Nigerian government, which he viewed as reluctant to enforce environmental regulations on the foreign petroleum companies operating in the area.

On May 1994, Saro-Wiwa was on his way to address an Ogoni town rally, but was turned back at a military road block. He went home, but the rally went ahead. A riot ensued and four Ogoni village elders were killed. Saro-Wiwa was arrested, alongside fifteen others, and accused of incitement to murder. Ken Saro-Wiwa, with other eight co-defendants, were found guilty and were sentenced to death by the orders of the then Nigeria's military leader, General Sani Abacha. He (Ken Saro-Wiwa) was fifty-four years old.

      1.5       Synopsis of Pita Dumbrok’s Prison

In Pita Dumbrok‟sPrison, Ken Saro-Wiwa systematically treats the phenomenon of corruption in Nigeria through the allegory of an island, Jebs – built ostensibly by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) where elite prisoners from various countries of Africa is kept to brainstorm on ways of finding answers to the economic, political and moral morass into which the continent has sunk. Nigeria chooses to locate the prison on a dredged-up island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. As the tension between the military authorities in Nigeria and the Director of Jebs reaches a decisive point, Jebs‟ prison is invaded and blows into the sea with all its inmates, except Pita Dumbrok, perishing with the prison. As the sole survivor of the attack, Pita escapes the ruins of the prison by swimming to the shores of Nigeria. Through this survivor (Pita Dumbrok), the writer retrieves the Jeb‟s story under the new narrative name of Pita Dumbrok‟s Prison. 

The narrative focuses basically on Pita‟s public memorialisation of events in the Jebs‟ prison, and the complex tragic drama that his revelations generate. While in prison, Pita undergoes ideological metamorphosis. The serialisation story of Pita in the media of his experience in the Jebs prison is stopped by the military government. Angered by the junta‟s draconian measures against freedom of expression, Pita becomes openly critical of military misrule and is soon arrested after a massive manhunt. During his interrogation by Captain Ita, a security officer, Pita questions the legitimacy of the military in government and labels their intervention in governance as a “great betrayal”. Pita writes and circulates a revolutionary

“letter” to his compatriots in which he recounts the proud history of Africa and identifies foreign interests and their local collaborators as being responsible for Africa‟s ruin. Pita‟s ideas expressed in his letter actuate other journalists like Andizi and Biney to set out on a quixotic search for the Jeb‟s prison at the cost of their lives. 

A journalist and later wife of Pita Dumbrok, Asa, come to know about the workings of the military through her intimate love relationship with Rear Admiral Vicko, the naval officer who had led the military offensive on the Jeb‟s prison. This affair is doomed to fail because of their ideological differences. Asa becomes increasingly critical of the military institution which Vicko represents. Throughout her uneasy affair with Rear Admiral Vicko, Asa never fails to criticise the oppressive military institution. The military authorities impose censorship on the press by forbidding the Daily Observer from publishing any story that might embarrass the junta. Meeting face to face with Pita during the interrogation session, Captain Ita gains the boon of ideological reawakening. While in military service, Captain Ita alongside his colleagues had been wrongfully detained and tortured on false allegation of plotting to overthrow the government. Although he narrowly escapes death by firing squad,

Captain Ita‟s best friend, Alade, is convicted and publicly executed by the authorities. Captain Ita is summarily discharged from the armed forces thus terminating his career, despite his innocence.

Captain Ita defies his security bosses and controversially sets Pita Dumbrok free from detention. A bitter disagreement erupts between Captain Ita and his boss (Alhaji Biga) over his refusal to rearrest Pita Dumbrok. Pita is killed through a parcel bomb sent by the head of the country‟s ruling junta. As events unfold, Captain Ita kills Alhaji Biga and Rear Admiral Vicko in an act of vengeance.

      1.6       Helon Habila’s Background

Helon Habila Ngalabak was born in 1967 to a Christian Tangale family in Kaltungo, Gombe State, north east region of Nigeria. His father, Habila Ngalabak, started out his career as a preacher with white missionaries, and later became a civil servant with the Ministry of Works. Helon Habila completed his primary and secondary education in Kaltungo in 1984 after which he proceeded to the University of Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria to study English Literature. He worked as a lecturer for three years at the Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi and a journalist in Lagos, before moving to England in 2002 to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Presently, he teaches creative writing at the George Mason University in Virginia, Washington D.C.

            Helon Habila is a novelist and poet. In 2001, his short story, “Love Poems” won

the Caine Prize. On 17^th January, 2004, he published his first novel, Waiting for an ANGEL. In 2005/2006 he became the Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College, New York. In 2006 he coedited the British Council anthology New Writing 14. His second novel, Measuring Time, was published on 17^th February, 2007. His third novel, Oil on WATER, which deals with environmental pollution in the oil-rich Niger Delta of Nigeria, was published in the United States of America on 16^th May, 2011. His anthology, The Granta Book of the African Short

Story came out September, 2011. His fourth novel, The Chibok Girls was publish on 5^th December, 2016. His writings have won many prizes including, Virginia Library

Foundation‟s Fiction Award in 2008. In the same year Habila‟s short story The Hotel Malogo won the Emily Balch Prize.

      1.7       Synopsis of Oil on WATER

Habila‟s Oil on WATER,characterised by digressions and flashbacks, opens with two local journalists, Zaq and Rufus who embark on a rather dangerous trip into the foggy backwaters of the Niger Delta in search of Isabel Floode, the wife of a British oil executive who is kidnapped for ransom by a militia group whose stated goal is to bring the environmental destruction by the oil industry to the attention of the government and the world. Rufus, the protagonist of Habila's first-person narrative, is a keen young Nigerian reporter paired on a mission with his mentor, the legendary journalist, Zaq, a man who, though now fallen from grace to grass and alcohol-driven, still has wisdom to impart. During their quest to unravel the story of the kidnapped expatriate wife of an oil company, Isabel Floode, the journalists are captured by a Nigerian Army Major. His troops are conducting a guerrilla war with the region's militias, self-appointed freedom fighters. The oil industry has been associated with corruption, violence and bloodshed, wreaking ecological havoc on the Niger Delta region and its fishing and farming communities. The Niger Delta region benefits little or nothing from the enormous profits involve in the oil business. This fuels ethnic conflicts and guerrilla activities. As local lives and livelihoods are constantly endangered and life difficult for the people via oil spillage, kidnapping of foreigners is seen as opportunity to get rich over night by the kidnappers who proclaim themselves as freedom fighters.

1.8    Statement of the Research Problem

Critical works on Comparative Analysis of Language Use in Helon Habila‟s Oil on WATER and Ken Saro-Wiwa‟s Pita Dumbrok‟s Prison using linguistic parameters are, to the best of the researcher‟s knowledge, nonexistent. However, research works on other texts regarding areas of literary analysis have been the focal points to some researchers. Nnadi (2010), Adeleh (2011), Agemo (2011), Adane (2012), Nweze (2012) Tahar (2015), Sani (2016), Abatta (2017) and Lar (2018) have employed literary frameworks to espouse the themes of economic exploitation, social injustice, tyrannical leadership, environmental degradation and pollution in Nigeria, particularly in the Niger-Delta area. The literary frameworks and approaches employed in the works mentioned above range from the sociological school of literary criticism, new historicism to archetypal school of literary criticism. Though these approaches are useful, they do not compare the use of language, particularly between two texts. This is what informed the researcher to carry out this research work to fill in this gap. 

1.9     Research Questions

This study will attempt to answer the following research questions:

(1)  How do Ken Saro-Wiwa and Helon Habila use language to attain their thematic emphasis in the selected texts?

(2)  To what extent do the lexico-semantic features used by Ken Saro-Wiwa and Helon

Habila reveal specific meanings in the selected texts?

(3)  To what extent have the writers employed language to achieve meaning in the selected texts?

1.10    Aim and Objectives of the Study

This study aims at comparing the language use in the selected texts (Pita Dumbrok‟s Prison and Oil on WATER. To achieve this, the study intends to:

(1)  analyse how the authors have used language to attain thematic emphasis in the selected texts;

(2)  examine the extent to which the lexico-semantic features reveal the specific meanings in the selected texts; and

(3)  examine the extent to which the writers have employed language to achieve meaning in the selected texts.

1.11      Significance of the Study

This study is significant in the sense that it sheds light on the textual linguistic analysis in Pita Dumbrok‟s Prison (1991) written by Ken Saro-Wiwa and Oil on WATER (2012) by Helon Habila. Textual analysis focuses on the linguistic elements – such as clauses and sentences that are present in the selected texts. Through the textual linguistics analysis of the features in the selected texts, the study gives the reader(s) of these texts an insight and meaningful understanding of these texts. Using the linguistic stylistics approach, reveal how Helon Habila and Ken Saro-Wiwa manipulate language to strengthen their ideological stance. The analytical skills used are empirical in procedure and can be applied in the analysis of any literary discourse (texts).

1.12   Delimitation of the Study

This study is limited to doing a comparative analysis of language use in Ken Saro-

Wiwa‟s Pita dumbrok‟s Prison (1991) and Helon Habila‟s Oil on WATER (2012). The structures such as sentences and clauses analysed here reveal the linguistic styles adopted by the selected authors. However, in the course of this study, we discover that the language used in Pita Dumbrok‟s Prison talks more on agitation while Habila‟s Oil on WATER focuses more on ecological problems faced by the people of the Niger Delter. Hence the differences in language used.

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