An Analysis of Mood Structure in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half Of A Yellow Sun

Abstract

This study investigates how mood is deployed in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. The study examines the types of mood structures used in the text and explores how mood contributes to unveiling power relations, emotional state and ideological meaning with a view to accounting for the linguistic resources that reflect characters’ attitudes, social roles, and psychological states which contribute significantly to the interpersonal metafunction of language in the text. Ten (10) excerpts randomly drawn from the novel were analysed using the lens of Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2004) Systemic Functional Grammar framework for analysing mood. The study adopts a qualitative descriptive method. The findings reveal that Adichie deploys the use of declarative, interrogative and imperative mood, and in the text, mood is highly context-based. In domestic settings, mood choices function as instruments for shaping hierarchy, intellect, and identity negotiation among characters. In military and political contexts, mood becomes a vehicle of ideology, propaganda, and institutional authority.  Overall, Adichie shapes interpersonal dynamics and projects ideological positions in the narrative. The study concludes that mood serves as a linguistic resource through which this construction of power and authority during the Biafran struggle is demonstrated in the text. This study contributes to the growing field of literary linguistics by offering a detailed, functional analysis of how mood encodes interpersonal meanings in an African literary context.