LIST OF TABLES     

Table 1: Tree Diagram 1 - --  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -86

                             Table 2: Tree Diagram 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -    - - - - -86   

Table 3: Use of Simple Sentences in Texts A and B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 88

Table 4: Use of Compound Sentences in Texts A and B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - 91

Table 5: Use of Complex Sentences in Texts A and B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - 93

Table 6: Frequency of use of Sentences in Texts A and B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - 95

Table 7: Use of Disordered Syntax in Texts A and Text B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - -  - - 96

Table 8: Use of African American Vernacular English in Texts A and B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- 98

Table 9: Use of Anastrophe (inversion of sentence) in Texts A and B- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 100

Table 10: Use of Double Negatives in Texts A and B - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -101 

Table 11: Use of vulgar Language in Texts A and B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 102

Table 12: Use of Asyndeton in Texts A and B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - -105  

Table 13: Frequency of use Disordered Syntax and others in Texts A and B - - - - - - - - - - - - -  106                           

Table 14: Absence of Graphic Symbols in Text A- - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 107

Table 15: Use of Capitalization in Texts A and B- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -109

Table 16: Excessive use of Commas in Texts A and B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  111

Table 17: Use of Dash (-) in Texts A and B - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --113 Table 18: Use of Semi-colon in Texts A and B - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - 115                                            

Table 19: Use of Quotation mark in the middle of a Sentence in Texts A- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  116

Table 20: Use of Elision in Texts A and B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - 118

Table 21: Frequency of use of Graphological Features in Texts A and B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  119

Table 22: Frequency of use of Lexical items and others in Texts A and B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -132

Table 23: Frequency of use Lexical sets in Texts A and B - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 143

Table 24: Frequency of use of Rhetorical Tropes and Schemes in Text A and B - - - - - - - - - - - 161

Table 25: The Structure of a Declarative Sentence in Text A - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --165

Table 26: The Structure of Yes – No Interrogative Sentence in Text A- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -166

Table 27: The Structure of WH Interrogative Sentence – subject before finite in Text A - - - - -167

Table 28: The Structure of WH Interrogative Sentence – finite before subject in Text A- - - - - 167

Table 29: Circumstantial Element of Manner in Text A - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 169

Table 30: Senser and Phenomenon 1 in Text A- - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 172                          

Table 31:  Senser and Phenomenon 2 in Text A- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 173

Table 32:  Theme - Rheme Structure in Text A - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 178

Table 33:  Theme -Rheme Structure of Prepositional and Adverbial Phrases in Text A - - - - - - 179

Table 34: Theme- Rheme boundary in Declarative Clauses in Text A- - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - -181

Table 35:  Theme – Rheme Structure in WH Interrogative  in Text A- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -183

Table 36: Theme – Rheme Structure in Yes-No Interrogative in Text A - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - -183 Table 37:  Theme – Rheme Structure of Imperative Clauses in Text A - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 184

                                                                                                   xiv                       

Table 38: The Structure of a Declarative Sentence in Text B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -187

Table 39: The Structure of Yes- No Interrogative in Text B- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 188

Table 40: The Structure of WH Interrogative Sentence - subject before finite in Text B- - - - - -189

Table 41: The Structure of WH Interrogative Sentence – finite before subject in Text B- - - - --189

Table 42: Senser and Phenomenon 1 in Text B- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 192

Table 43: Senser and Phenomenon 2 in Text B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 192

Table 44: Theme – Rheme Structure in Text B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  194  

Table 45: Theme – Rheme Structure in Adverbial and Prepositional Phrases in Text B - - - - -- 194

Table 46: Thme - Rheme Boundary in Declarative Clause in Text B- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  196

Table 47:  Theme - Rheme Structure of WH Interrogative in Text B- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 197

Table 48:  Theme – Rheme Structure in Yes – No Interrogative in Text B - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -197

Table 49:  Theme – Rheme Structure in Imperative Clause in Text B- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -197

CHAPTER ONE  

INTRODUCTION

1.1      Background to the Study                    

Stylistics is a discipline that is found at the intersection of literary criticism and linguistics. Its application can be used in the study of journalism, popular texts, religious works, advertising, non-fiction, popular culture, politics, etc. According to Paul (2004: 3) "The preferred object of study in stylistics is literature, whether that be institutionally sanctioned 'literature' as high art or more popular 'non-canonical' forms of writing”. In addition, Paul (2004:2) further postulates that “stylistics is a method of textual interpretation in which primacy of place is assigned to language”. As a conceptual field of discourse, stylistics tries to establish and explain the different choices people make in the use of language in their writings. This is a common feature which is discernible in the search for dialogue, grammar, the use of active and passive voice, the distribution of sentences, i.e. simple, compound or complex, the use of registers and other language devices that depict the style of the writer. 

Ullman (1971:133) is of the opinion that “Stylistics is not a mere branch of linguistics, but, a parallel discipline which investigates the same phenomena from its own point of view”. Stylistics therefore, is “that part of linguistics which concentrates on variation in the use of language often but not exclusively, with special attention to the most conscious and complex use of language in literature”, Turner (1973:7). In view of this, the present study analyses how Toni Morrison fused two incongruous and fundamentally different characters into one community that love to hate and yet are forced to live together. What are the unique stylistic techniques at the lexico-syntactic and lexico-semantic levels employed by Morrison in expressing the myriad of problems, social and cultural differences as well as difficulties and racial tendencies exhibited in the selected works? It is based on these very crucial aspects of communication between the characters that this study anchors the analysis of data.  

Stylistics is most often referred to as the study of style. This implies that style is fundamental to this area of language study. The importance of style to stylistics is best captured by Babajide (2000: 122) when he says that “no style, no stylistics”. Stylistics has been defined by many scholars within the prism of style. Lucas (1955:9) says that style is “the effective use of language, especially in prose, whether to make statements or to arouse emotions. It involves first of all the power to put facts with clarity and brevity”. This means that for communication to be appropriate and effective, stylistics must be able to assess and show how language is applied in an utterance or a piece of writing. Similarly, Davy and Crystal (1983:9 quoted in Babajide 2000:123) argue that style is “the effectiveness of a mode of expression” by “saying the right thing in the most effective way”. What these definitions have in common is that style involves the use of choice or the alternative way of saying something from many options. In addition, Allan (1988 quoted in Babajide 2000:124) defines stylistics as: 

… a branch of linguistics which studies the characteristics of situationally distinctive uses of language with particular reference to literary language, and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language.  

Stylistics is the symbiosis of language and literature. Echoing the same argument, Stockwell  (2000:10) postulates that:

It might seem obvious to the non-specialist that literature, the most culturally valued and aesthetically prestigious form of language practice, is best studied using the resources developed in the field of linguistics. However, this truism has not always been obvious to a whole range of disciplines, all of which claim a different stake in the study of the literary…Stylistics is the discipline that has bridged these areas, and stylisticians have found themselves engaged in arguments not only with literary critics, cultural theorists, philosophers, poets, novelists and dramatists, but also with practitioners of linguistics.

Stylistics has a dual position and plays an important role in modern form of analysis. The roots of stylistics can be traced to the histories of language study as well as literary criticism. Stockwell (2000:11) further says that:

Stylistics has therefore come to be regarded as an essentially interdisciplinary field drawing on the different sub-disciplines within linguistics to varying degrees, as well as on fields recognizable to literary critics, such as philosophy, cultural theory, sociology, history and psychology.

Drawing from the interdisciplinary fields, this study focuses on the linguistic stylistic analysis of Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1988) and Paradise (1997). The study is aware of the importance of literary stylistics which is also a sub-field of stylistics that interprets message of a text or a piece of writing by establishing the identity and style of the writer. However, this study is a linguistic stylistic analysis at the lexico-syntactic and lexico-semantic levels that examines the effect and impact of the mode of expression in Toni Morrison’s selected texts.

1.2    Toni Morrison: A historical brief 

Chloe Anthony Wofford or Toni Morrison is an acclaimed writer from the United States of America. She was born in Ohio in 1931 and attended Howard University and Cornell University respectively for her first and second degrees in English language. She had a stint as a lecturer in Howard University before leaving to become an editor at Random House with specialization in black fiction (www.biography.com/Toni Morrison). Morrison began her creative career in the 1970s. Her first novel The Bluest Eye was written in 1970. It was followed in 1974 by Sula, the work that catapulted her for nomination for the National Book Award. In addition, her book Song of Solomon (1977) won Morrison the National Book Critics Award in 1977. She is a prolific writer who has written many books which include Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987) which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Jazz (1992) and Paradise (1997). In view of her outstanding works, Morrison became the first African-American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Furthermore, in 2012, Morrison was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and she also added another feather to her cap of achievements by winning the 2016 PEN/ SAUL Bellow award. The award is bestowed to living American authors “whose scale of achievement in fiction, over a sustained career, places him or her in the highest rank of American literature” (Daily Trust, March 6, 2016:39). 

However, despite the lofty achievements of Morrison in works of fiction, her books the Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved “are among the most challenged and banned books in America” (Guillermo 2016). A challenged book in America means a book that is not permitted to be used in the library or school curriculum. According to The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), a book is challenged because it has or contains any one of the three top reasons which means the content is “sexually explicit” or the language is “offensive” or the work is “unsuited to any age or group.” Toni Morrison was married to a Jamaican architect Harold Morrison and has two sons even though they divorced after six years. Presently, Morrison is a Professor in the Faculty of Humanities at Princeton University in the United States of America. Source: (www.enotes.com/.../whiteness-blackness-explain-through-themes-beloved)

1.2.1 About the Books

Beloved (1987) is a book set in 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio during the Reconstruction era. It is an exposition of the evils of slavery in America. It explores the destruction of identity, the devastation of the physical, emotional and spiritual firmament of the enslaved. The effect of slavery is not only limited to the period of the inhuman practice, but, is a phenomena that continues to haunt the enslaved years after getting freedom. The mere thought that one is treated as subhuman and a commodity to be traded in dollars is a demeaning and psychologically traumatic experience. It is this feeling of loss and frustration that led Seethe to murder her daughter and attempt the killing of the other children so that they can escape the physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual trauma of slavery. Source: The frustration and racial disparity is not limited to the blacks because the colored also have a foretaste of the trauma:

Very few had died in bed…and none…had lived a livable life. Even the colored people: the long-school people, the doctors, the teachers, the paper-writers and businessmen had a hard row to hoe. In addition to having to use their heads to get ahead, they had the weight of the whole race sitting there. You needed two heads for that (Beloved 1987:199).

Source: (www.enotes.com/.../whiteness-blackness-explain-through-themes-beloved)

Besides the dehumanizing living conditions and animal treatment meted out to the blacks, the slavers perceive the enslaved as a jungle full of evil creatures. But the evil is implanted by the slavers and not a nature of the blacks:

White people believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way . . . they were right. . . . But it wasn’t the jungle blacks brought with them to this place. . . . It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread . . . until it invaded the whites who had made it. . . . Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own (Beloved, 229).

Paradise (1997) is a contrast to Beloved. While the latter focuses on man’s inhumanity to man the former explores the idea of love, purity and uprightness. The book is set in Ruby a fictional township in Oklahoma in the 1970s. The novel depicts a community’s struggle between its past, present and what the future holds. After the American Civil War, many African-Americans migrated to the West of the country in search of better living conditions. However, besides looking for a better life, they were also trying to isolate themselves from white segregation. 

The characters in the novel try to create a community free from evils that are prevalent in the outside world. They want a community that is like paradise. But, the utopian community they desire could not be achieved because of the human capacity to wrought evil. Moreover, their sought –after community can only be achieved if human beings are perfect. The clamor for racial purity, unity, harmony and love, though desirable in any society, is sometimes a mirage that can only be wished. This is attested by how the community falls apart by disallowing American Indians, whites and light-skinned African-Americans into their midst and also their inability to come to terms with what they mean by love. Does love mean what happens between a man and a woman? Or is it between a woman and a woman? How do women view a patriarchal society? The inability of the people in Ruby to come to terms with this leads to the creation of two different worlds in the book: the town of Ruby led by the men and the Convent which serves as a sanctuary for women who run away from men and cherish the freedom they have as well as challenge the patriarchal dominance in the society. With this development, it is only a matter of time before the inevitable happen. The men from Ruby decide to launch an attack against the five women (one is white) in the Convent because they represent what the people resent, that is, white people and light-skinned blacks. The men enter the Convent and “shoot the white girl first. With the rest *of the women+ they can take their time.” (p. 3). With these developments, Paradise encapsulates a community that portrays good and evil, righteousness, uprightness, love and hatred, violence and wickedness. It is a community polarized between greed, jealousy, lies, murder, adultery and above all a search for freedom and emancipation. 

This study focuses on a linguistic stylistic analysis of the two selected texts of Toni Morrison. The research examined the style of narration and how Morrison weaved the disparate characters in the novels and produced magnificent works of fiction.

1.3    Statement of the Research Problem

Language is a veritable tool that can enact and reenact past and present events. The power of language to effect change, persuade and change the perception of people is enormous (Stockwell 2000). However, the use of language among people varies. Some use it casually to interact on mundane or trivial issues while others use it in a profound sense or elevated form. Those that use language in an elevated form are writers, poets, playwrights and philosophers who are more sensitive to language use than other people. Consequently, they try to share their experiences, perceptions and creativity with fellow beings; they always try to show the good, the bad and the folly of humanity. 

Morrison’s works have received accolades throughout the world and this is the researcher’s major motivation to analyse her use of language from a linguistic stylistic perspective. Beloved won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction as a masterpiece, magnificent, astounding, etc. such that some people cannot imagine American literature without it (John Leonard, Los Angeles Times quoted on the back cover of Beloved 1988). Similarly, Paradise has been described as a masterful work, powerful and extraordinary. However, in spite of these encomiums, Beloved was banned in 2012 and together with The Bluest Eye was among the top ten banned books in America. This contradiction, that is, commendation and condemnation of Morrison’s works have prompted this researcher to analyse the stories and demonstrate how the author’s use of language at the lexico-syntactic and lexico-semantic levels attract both encomium and censure. Morrison’s works have also received many critical reviews. These criticisms are mostly found in books and articles in journals, both national and international. However, the dominant trends in analysing Morrison’s works were mostly centred on content and theme. Some of the reviews were concerned with the search for identity, the idea of absence, or of being nameless which is prevalent in African American literature (Pasquier 1985); the interpretation of culture and social identity of the black people (Rafael et al. 1997); blackness as a figure of absence and negation (Gates 1984); a vivid and stark portrayal of the worst horrors of slavery (Smith 2011); the effects of race, racism, gender and sexism (Crenshaw et al. 1995).  

In addition, there are also some scholarly works that analysed Morrison’s work within the prism of thematic and aesthetic preoccupation. Abah (2008) examines Morrison’s novels within the “profundity of the literary medium that explores the human experience to which African American experience belongs”. Kofoworola’s (2013) examines how Morrison “balances the contentions between nature, nurture and nativity as key ingredients for the construction and deconstruction of myths which is the structure of her narratology.” 

However, to the best of the knowledge of the researcher, not much attention has been paid to the lexico- syntactic and lexico-semantic aspects of the selected works. This study therefore fills the missing gap, that is, the linguistic stylistic analysis at the lexico-syntactic and lexicosemantic levels of the selected texts which earlier studies have not covered. The study adopts the qualitative and quantitative method of analysis to examine at the lexico-semantic and lexico-syntactic levels the forms of interactions in Morrison’s Beloved and Paradise.

Similarly, it is pertinent to note that, a writer is directly or indirectly influenced by what goes on in his/her society. Most often, the society’s cultural, social and political happenings spur a writer to write about such things. Based on these assumptions, this research highlights from the perspective of Halliday’s (1994 and 2014) metafunctions how the socio-cultural-cum-economic dimension of Morrison’s society informed the stylistic choices in her works.

1.4   Research Questions 

The study is concerned with answering the following questions:

(i)                  How does variation of style at the lexico-syntactic level contribute to the understanding of Morrison’s selected texts?

(ii)                What are the lexico-semantic features Morrison uses to achieve her style of narration in the selected texts?

(iii)              What stylistic features of interpersonal relationship enhance the characters relationship and interactions?

(iv)              What ideational features reveal the apparent and hidden messages in the selected novels?    

(v)                How could Morrison’s choice of theme-rheme structures advance the reader’s understanding of the selected texts?

1.5   Aim and Objectives of the Study      

The aim of the research is to do a linguistic stylistic analysis of Toni Morrison’s novels Beloved and Paradise and highlight the important role that language plays in the hands of a literary writer. The objectives to achieve include to:

(i)                  examine the levels of variation of style at the lexico-syntactic level and how they aid comprehension of Morrison’s selected texts;

(ii)                investigate the lexico-semantic features used by Morrison in the selected texts;

(iii)              highlight how the features of interpersonal relationship deployed enhance the characters’ relationship in their daily interactions in the selected texts;

(iv)              analyse the ideational stylistic features that unravel the hidden and unhidden messages of the writer in the selected texts; and

(v)                explicate the author’s choice of theme-rheme structures at the textual level to convey the salient messages in the selected texts.

1.6     Scope and Delimitation of the Study  

This work is limited to the linguistic stylistic analysis of the novels Beloved and Paradise by Toni Morrison. The focus of this research is to analyse the linguistic features used to re-enact the messages in the selected texts. To achieve this, the study examines how Morrison used linguistic stylistic features such as lexico-syntactic and lexico-semantic levels in the selected texts. Consequently, the study adopts Systemic Functional Linguistics developed by Halliday (1994 and 2014) as its theoretical framework.  The study applied the three metafunctions of language espoused by Halliday using the qualitative analysis of direct quotations from characters in the selected texts. In addition, the study also used some traditional linguistic approaches in the analysis. The study analysed 410 sentences from the two texts.

1.7   Justification and Significance of the Study                    The significance of this study is to investigate how the author uses language to exhume America’s past and lay it bare for the contemporary world to witness the evil and inhuman treatment once meted out to its citizens. In the same vein, the study explores how language is used to portray other issues like the clash of good and evil, moral righteousness, hatred and violence and the triumph of good over evil which were vividly illustrated in the discourse of the characters in the selected texts.

The study hopes to offer students and researchers in the field of stylistics the unique style at the lexico-syntactic and lexico-semantic level that Morrison deploys in her works. The work will also provide useful insight into pedagogical skills that can be applied to stylistic study in teaching and analysing Morrison’s selected works. It is hoped that teachers, students, readers and researchers will benefit from this work.

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