Making the Best of a “Bad” Situation: Onwudinjo’s Linguistic Gymnastics in De Wahala for Wazobia

Abstract

A second language set up is viewed by some scholars, especially linguistic purists, as an arena for language corruption. For most purists, a bilingual situation is prone to bastardization as one language has the proclivity to interfere with the other. However, other scholars claim that a second language situation provides an ambience for a richer linguistic milieu and creativity than that provided by a monolingual community. This paper, therefore, using critical stylistic methods, analyses the linguistic creativity of four poems in Onwudinjo’s collection of poems entitled De Wahala for Wazobia. It attempts to highlight and analyze the different linguistic levels within which Onwudinjo has displayed some form of legerdemain and/or dexterity while still maintaining the focus of his message. The study adopts Kees Hengeveld and Lachlan Mackenzie`s (1997) Functional Discourse Grammar theory to show how context, co-text and culture intermingle with language production especially as it affects the poet`s linguistic situation in the text. The study reveals that Onwudinjo’s choice of Pidgin English which is primarily to reach a wider reading audience exhibits some linguistic effects in the duplication of terms for emphasis and meaning intensification, creative formation of new words as a character of a living language and approximation of sounds to ease pronunciation. The paper concludes that the dynamism in language has offered the writer the opportunity to manoeuvre his way through national rhetoric.