Lexical Cohesive Devices in Liwhu Betiang's Beneath the Rubble

Abstract

Lexical cohesion constitutes an important mechanism through which textual continuity and meaning construction are achieved in discourse. This study investigates the deployment of lexical cohesive devices in Liwhu Betiang's Beneath the Rubble (2009), with a view to examining how antonymy, synonymy, and repetition contribute to textual cohesion and the construction of socio-cultural meanings. The research has become necessary as only a limited scholarly attention has been paid to the role of lexical cohesive devices in contemporary Nigerian fiction. The study is anchored on Halliday and Hasan's (1976) Theory of Cohesion within the broader framework of Halliday’s (1961) Systemic Functional Grammar. Fourteen purposively selected textual extracts from the novel were theoretically analysed. They comprise six instances of antonymy, five instances of synonymy, and three instances of repetition. Findings reveal that antonymy constitutes the most prominent lexical cohesive device in the selected corpus, followed by synonymy and repetition. The identified devices function as mechanisms of textual continuity as well as resources for representing gender experiences, social disparity, and communal conflict and reconciliation. The study concludes that lexical cohesion performs textual, thematic, stylistic, and ideological functions simultaneously in the novel. It further demonstrates that lexical cohesive devices contribute significantly to the organization of meaning and the representation of social realities in literary discourse. This study on the discourse analysis of lexical cohesive devices in the novel Beneath the Rubble by a Nigerian author, Liwhu Betiang, makes an invaluable contribution to discourse analysis and Nigerian literary studies.