ANALYSING STYLE THROUGH PHONO-GRAPHOLOGICAL PATTERNS: A CASE STUDY OF WOLE SOYINKA’S MADMEN AND SPECIALISTS

Various criticisms, be they linguistic or literary, have focused on Wole Soyinka’s Madmen and Specialists. However, it seems that very few of them have devoted their work to the study of style, with a special reference to the phono-graphological features. This study aims at filling in this gap. It attempts analyze the phono-graphological aspects of the play. The paper has drawn upon Leech (1969), Leech & Short (2007) and Halliday’s (1978, 1985a) linguistic theories to inquire into the language of the play. As a matter of fact, the analysis reveals that, at the phonological level, features of sound repetition, sound interpretation and vowel lengthening occur in the speech of some of the characters of the play. As for the graphological level, patterns of capitalization, italicization, hyphenation and dotting are identified. The work concludes that these linguistic features are foregrounded not only to highlight some aspects of style and meanings in the play but also to point out their aesthetic import which stresses the writer’s idiolect and accounts for the way he has developed the major theme of his play