Adjective use in literary text: a grammatico-pragmatic analysis of Wole Soyinka’s The Lion And The Jewel

Abstract

The study investigated the grammatico-pragmatic uses of various forms of adjectives in Wole Soyinka‟s The Lion and the Jewel. Adopting a textual analysis research design, the study examined the categories of adjectives employed in the text and the implications of their use on the characters and events in the text. The text was processed using the AntConc Software version 3.5.9 which read and marked the word items in the text for the researcher to identify the adjectives. The analysis was based on the adjective models of Leech & Short (2007) and Downing & Locke (2006). The analysis revealed that a variety of adjective forms including simple, compound, participial and derived adjectives were used by the writer to signal addition, progression, completeness and newness of qualities and attributes of persons and events in the text. It was also found that the syntactic positions of the adjectives used in the text served to focus identity and description in order to expose the character or characteristics of persons they modified. The findings highlight aspects of the use of adjectives in creative and literary texts that have implications for the teaching of such texts. The study therefore recommends that teachers of literature begin to give particular attention to adjective use in literary texts studied in schools as such scrutiny may reveal further aspects of meaning and messaging.