Lexical playfulness and gender relations in Sefi Atta’s Everything good will come

Abstract

Lexical playfulness is a significant lexical strategy employed by writers to define and re-define new Englishes in social practices. Nigerian writers use this means (otherwise lexical innovation) to portray a lot of social issues in their literary works. One of such issues is the textualisation of gender relations especially in depicting an apparent imbalance between men and women in social practices. Although many studies have been carried out on gender imbalance, there is little or no attempt on the study of lexical playfulness on gender relations in Sefi Atta’s Everything good will come. This study fills this gap by examining how lexical playfulness is employed in the sampled novel to signify new Englishes, specifically in bending the language so as to achieve a desired communicative intent. It
adopts the approaches of new Englishes and feminist linguistics in demonstrating exquisite display of lexically innovated gender items in the expression of indigenous thoughts. The study identifies two discourse strategies of lexical playfulness relating to gender: new
Englishes projecting hybrid forms/varieties of English, and new Englishes and expansion. Therefore, the lexicalised expressions portray male supremacy, female powerlessness, and how females and their advocates struggle to disentangle themselves from the shackles of male dominance.