The language of Ubesie in J?? Obinna

Abstract

Language is the substantial material available to literary artists in their bid to achieve their goals, among which are entertain, educate and preserve cultural values. In its use, the literary artists’ exhibit creativity: a situation that sets them apart from others. Okoye (2007:1) evidences this by pointing out that when the literary artist discusses anything, he sometimes goes beyond the real. He does this to convince his readers of his imaginative art. Going beyond the real has an implication for the specialized features of the language of literary artists. This paper reveals some of such features as are manifest in Tony Ubesie’s juo obinna. The features are represented in sentence types and their functions. They are also represented in figures of speech and related devices, among which are metaphor, irony, euphemism, hyperbole, proverbs (classified here as functional and cosmetic), personification and synecdoche. Uzochukwu (2007:1) is indeed right in commenting “language is always more fundamental in the appraisal of literary texts”