PURESPICE

2018-01-16T12:15:00.000-08:00

A Study on Semiotics as a Literary Theory.

Compiled by:

Names Matric number

1) MAKINDE Kehinde O. 137437
2) FEMI-ADEOSUN Oluwadamilola Y. 143657
3) YAWE Doofan B. 180425
4) ODEBAMIKE Yemisi G. 137442
5) OYEKAN Bashirat Titilayo
6) AMIOLA Oyeleye

European studies,
Postgraduate school,
University of Ibadan.

15th September, 2014.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The history behind semiotics testifies that it meant at first, a medical diagnosis. A study that identified the ways that various symptoms indicate the diseases that underlie them. It was not applied to the study of relation between human symbols and reality. Aristotle (384-322 BC) took it to investigate the relation between forms and reality more closely. He pointed out that words for instance, do indeed refer to real things, which helps to classify the world into real categories e.g. plants versus animals versus objects and so on.

St. Augustine (AD 354-430) defined a natural science as one that is found literally in nature such as bodily symptoms, the rustling of leaves, the colours of plants, as are the signals that animals emit in response to physical and emotional state. He distinguished this type of sign from a conventional sign, which is a sign made by humans. According to him, words, gestures and symbols are examples of conventional signs though in modern-day semiotic theory, these have been distinguished into verbal and nonverbal-words and other linguistic structures (expressions, phrases, etc.) could be termed as verbal signs; also, drawings and gestures are examples of non-verbal signs. As St. Augustine emphasized, conventional signs serve a fundamental psychological need that allow humans to encode and thus, familiarize with the world through routine recognitions.
He further defined sacred signs such as miracles, as signs containing messages from God. He believes these signs can only be understood on faith. He also emphasized that the whole process of understanding what signs mean is partly based on social conventions and partly on individual reactions to them. This idea was consistent with the hermeneutic tradition that had already been established by Clement of Alexandria (AD 150-215?), the Greek theologian and early Father of the Church. Hermeneutics was (and still is) the study of texts by taking into account their linguistic features and the historical contexts in which they were written.
His views were not known until the eleventh century, when interest in human signs was rekindled by traveling Arab scholars who had translated the works of Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek thinkers. The result was the movement known as Scholasticim. Using Aristotle as their inspiration, the Scholastics asserted that signs captured truths, not constructed them. But within this movement there were some—the so-called nominalists—who argued that “truth” was a matter of subjective opinion and that signs captured at best, only illusory and highly variable human versions of it. John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) and William of Ockham (c.1285-c. 1349) for instance, stressed that signs only referred to other signs, rather than to actual things. The great theologian St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) countered however, that signs referred to real things since they were derived from sense impressions. But like St. Augustine, he asserted that sacred signs revealed truths that were beyond rational comprehension and therefore had to be accepted on faith.

About four centuries later, the British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) finally introduced the formal study of signs into philosophy in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), calling it semeiotics for the first time. Locke clearly anticipated that it would allow philosophers to study the relation between concepts and reality much more precisely. But the task he laid out for philosophy remained virtually unnoticed until the late nineteenth century, when the ideas of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) became the platform on which an autonomous field of inquiry was gradually constructed in the twentieth century. In his Cours de linguistique générale (1916), Saussure used the term semiology to designate the field. He coined it in obvious analogy to other scientific terms ending in-logy, such as psychology, biology, anthropology, (from Greek logos “word,” “study”). Somehow, Saussure’s term betrayed a belief in the supremacy of language among sign systems. He puts it this way:
“Language is a system of signs that expresses ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, polite formulas, military signals, etc. But it is the most important of all these systems” (Saussure 1916:16).

WHAT IS SEMIOTICS?

Semiotics which deals with the study of signs was propounded by Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Peirce. Although the two agree on the meaning of semiotics as the production and interpretation of meanings made by the deployment of acts and objects which function as signs in relation in relation to other sign, they defer in their concepts and conclusions. For Saussure, semiotics is based more on the concept of linguistics signifier and signified while Peirce’s is based on the logic of an object (referent) and reference (idea begotten by the sign). Saussure was less concerned with the referent instead emphasized the arbitrary nature of the relationships between the signifier and signified as well as the differences between signifiers in the production of memory.
Semiotics involves the study of not only of what we refer to as signs in everyday speech, but of anything which stands for something else which can be in form of words, images, sounds gestures and objects.
‘Signs do not just convey meanings, but constitute a medium in which meanings are constructed. Semiotics helps us to realize that meaning is not passively absorbed but arise only in the active process of interpretation …’ (Routledge 2006).
Semiotics literary criticism also called literary semiotics is the approach to literary criticism informed by the theory of signs pioneered by Ferdinand de Saussure. It is concerned with a formal analysis of narrative forms which would resemble a literary syntax. A semiotic analysis of a literary text deals, instead of themes and general meaning with the way in which meaning is produced by the structure of independent signs, by codes and conventions. As a linguistic sign, the test has an arbitrary nature and is based in conventions.
In semiotic literary criticism, two things are important; signified and signifier or signification. The first gives the mental presentation of a thing or an idea while the latter helps in the understanding of the given sign while taking into consideration the context or the environment in which the sign is used i.e. the context of the situation and the context of the culture. The situational context interprets the signs in its immediate environment of the text i.e. cultural context of the characters used in the text. Signifier or signification is an instrument that serves to interpret and bring out the hidden sense of symbols in the text. It explains and elucidates the importance of the use of metaphors, metonymies, hyperboles, personifications, idiomatic expressions, proverbs, etc. Semiotic methods have been identified in two folds which are synchronic and diachronic methods.

• Synchronic method: It is the study of signs at a given point in time.
• Diachronic method: it is the study of how signs change, in form and meaning over time.

PRINCIPLES OF SEMIOTICS

1. Culture: Culture is the way of life of a people. It is the shared beliefs, customs, values, practices and social behaviour of a group. culture in relation to semiotics as described by discourse analysts, focuses on the ways in which the shape of discourse is determined by social and situational factors. Culture- specific language ideology may make purpose mere or less relevant to how people produce and interprets discourse in particular relations and settings.
2. Signification: It is the meaning of a concept or an idea brought by a word, an event or other phenomenon. Signification happens in two ways namely denotation and connotation. Denotation is the surface or literal meaning of a word while connotation is the more profound and figurative meaning of it. Connotation helps to expand the application of signs or words creatively. For example, the word ‘house’. The denotation of the word house could signify where someone lives while the connotation could signify in sentences below:

The house is in session— legislative assembly, quorum
The house roared in laughter— audience in a theatre
They sleep at one of the houses in UI— dormitory, hostel

3. Symbol: A symbol is something that stands for or represents something else, especially an object representing an abstraction. On this note, Ferdinand de Saussure identifies the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, that is to say, the conventionality of the relationship between form and meaning where he explains that there may be several forms to just a meaning. For example concept ‘house’ remains the same to different groups of people in the world but the way it is called is different. However, a symbol is a sign which would lose the character which makes it a sign if there were no interpretant.
4. Icon: an icon is a sign which tends to possess the attribute which renders it significant, even though its object had no existence.
5. Index: according to C.S Pierce, an index is a sign which would, at once lose the character which makes it a sign if its object were removed, but would not lose that character if there were no interpretant. For example, we will be too quick to assume that smoke is fire or that someone with a slurred speech is drunk. We should note that the presence of smoke does not necessarily indicate that there is fire somewhere and that someone’s slurred is points to drunkenness.
6. Idealism: This is a principle that there is an objectively existing world which is not dependent on our minds, and that people are able to understand aspects of that world through perception.
7. Conceptualism: By this we mean to refer to any feature of semantics which defines the meaning of a word or other expression to be the concept associated with it in the mind of the speaker and hearer.
8. Nominalism: As concept could be in form of a word or sign, nominalism says that the apprehension of a concept in the mind is directly relative to its first intuitive apprehension.
9. Syntactic: Syntactic studies how signs are related to each other.
10. Semantics: It is simply the study of meanings. It also studies symbols, signs and what they represent. However, it studies how these signs.
11. Pragmatics: Pragmatics is concerned with how linguistic signs are related to people, that is, the effect of a signal on an individual. This part of semiotics is has a lot to pair with sociolinguistics.
According to Stephen C. Levinson (2003)

“Pragmatics is the study of those relations between language and context that are grammaticalized or encoded in the structure of a language. In a more implicit form and with a notion of appropriateness or felicity; it is the study of the ability of language users to pair sentences with the context in which they would be appropriate.
However, the relationship between the last three elements is such that if in a serious work, the notable reference is made to the speaker or to the user of the language, then it is assigned to the field of pragmatics. Then, if we go from here to the user of the language to analyse only the expressions and their designate, we are in the field of semantics and if at last, we move from here to analyse only the relations between expressions, we will be tending towards ( logical) syntax.

Semiotic criticism of LES SOLEILS DES INDEPENDENCE by Ahmadou Kourouma
The novel narrates the life of Fama after the independence of his country. Fama is a prince of Togobala, a village in the Horodougou regionof the imaginary country the Cotes of Ebenes. He fights soul and body for the independence of his country from France. Unfortunately, he did not benefit from the fruit of his effort because after the independence the new administrators did not recognize his past participations. He lives on the foods distributed to the visitors invited for funeral ceremonies and small scale business if his sterile wife. He decided to go the city after being imprisoned and release to leave in the village after the death of his cousin Lassina. The journey was fatal for him because he was killed on his way.
From the title of the novel Les Soleils des Independences. Les Soleils in this context does not signify the sun but an ‘era’- a period’ after independence.
Signs of language deconstruction in les soleils des independences
In the book the author through the deliberate use of borrowing, neology and pidgin, portrays the concept of deconstruction of the imperial language which is Français.
"Famaetsesdeux femmes occupaient la petite pièce avec un seul lit de bambou, un seultara". (p.151)
Tara: traditional mat in Malinke country used in place of "la natte" the standard french.
"Les chefs de Toukorodormait, ivre de dolo au milieu de ses sujets".
Dolo: traditional bier from corn.

The semiotic elements in Buchi Emecheta’s work Second-Class Citizen (1975).
It is a literary work that tells us the story a passionate young girl of Ibuza who was born and breed in the city of Lagos. Her story which was opened to us of her life from age 8 as she guessed into her childhood, adolescence and marital ordeals.
The title Second-Class Citizen implies her life as a “deuxieme sexe”- all she suffered based on gender deprivation, illiteracy level of her society, lack of social amenities in her homeland and how she felt unloved and unwanted from infancy <her parents were expecting a male child> and her husband saw her as his personal ATM.
The plotting was intelligently coined to create an imagery of her experiences such as:
 "a cold welcome”: it makes us imagine the level of interpersonal relationship that exist amongst the English people. Their persona is as cold and unwelcoming as their season- winter. England was cold in every possible way- culturally as its citizens.
“population control”: Adah had to try to take her life in her hands- health; she had to try out one of the birth control / or family planning methods to protect herself from the overpopulation experienced in their one room apartment with her meagre salary to cater for their monthly feeding budget, health care and family emergencies. These are things that should naturally be the burden of a government to curb inflation or poverty in a country.
‘United kingdom’- a place of great civilization, prosperity and a nation that has gotten to its peak symbolized the pinnacle of her ambition / dreams.
“But she made a secret vow to herself that she would go to this United Kingdom one day. Her arrival there would be the pinnacle of her ambition” pg. (17)
“Lucifer”- in her dream her husband became her personal chief spirit of evil and adversary of her very existence; he was the master of the Hell of a life she was living. It painted Francis in the best way a pained heart would describe a tormentor, a manipulator and oppressor who had become an itch on her very skin.
“Girl”- it denotes a slave- a domesticated being, sex object and child bearer and care taker. The African society were this work draws her relevance does not regard the girl child as worthy of birth as a male child is worth more than seven (7) female children – patriarchal society.
“Presence”- was depicted as the persona of Adah – her zeal, passion, determination and inspiration to attain all her desire and glide like the eagle through the wind- situations.
Linguistic defects used as a tool of imagery in a situational context:
“Breeding”- it was created from the distortion of a word <bleeding> caused by a linguistic defect called Spoonerism< the transposition of initial consonants in a pair of words>. It was intended to create the image of what the French calls mère pondeuse or chaud lapin to describe the successive child bearing of Adah; c'estunevraie pondeuse - she breeds like a rabbit.
“Good Rord”- as against <good Lord>, it was used to describe how fertile and effective Francis’s penis was in making Adah breed children.
“A face like an O”- it is an expression used to create a mental image of the physical facial feature of the people of the Japanese Archipelago- a round looking face.

Analysis and interpretation of UNDER THE BROWN RUSTED ROOFS.

Another work for consideration is Abiombola Adunni Adelakun’s Under The Brown Rusted Roofs where the author uses several imageries to reveal the way of life within the Ibadan metropolis in late 1970s to the early 1980s. The title begins with a prepositional phrase Under The Brown Rusted Roofs; we can start by digging into what could be the nearest possible message of the author. The concept brown in this context simply refers not just to a natural colour but of course the colour of the African man’s skin which though in contrast to the white man’s skin is generally referred to as black. Also, it is scientific just as it is logical for a rusted roof to be brown, this means however that for a rusted roof to be brown, it must first have gone through many years of utility without repair or replacement before it is termed rusted. However, it is significant to know that before the duration of years within which this the author sets her work, the roofs had been rusted, within those years of political and military era, the roofs were still rusted and also, since that time till now, the roofs of these houses with location and sight that gives a traveller the impression that he has entered Ibadan on arrival haven’t still changed from being rusted.
This simple interpretation tells us something of importance; the work Under The Brown Rusted roofs is a work that doubtlessly characterizes postmodernism, feminism and of course post colonialism which helps feature the characters involved that in bid not to give in to western education (cultural decolonization) and whatever it brings along, these indigenes find themselves still wallowing in their primitive lifestyle.
Anyway, one good thing about the houses under these roofs is that they are still strong. One easily wonders why despite the rustication that has pervaded these metropolis, the people (houses) living under remain convincingly and emotionally resilient and unbreakable, still thriving over years. Whether they are corrupt or stubborn is not our concern here at least they have a culture with which they identify. This is as depicted by Arigbabuwo as a child asking his father that ‘those houses…...the roofs are rusty…..they won’t collapse one day? His father responded telling him that the roofs under them (houses) are strong.
Therefore, the rusted roofs is significant to the age-long life of corruption, illiteracy, dirt, immorality and politics of polygamy that engulfs the beere, ojee area of the Ibadan indigenes. Illiteracy made a character like Mulika forget that she had missed her period when pregnant for Rafiu, the also, Baba n’sale believed that any wife who messes up in his corridor (house) was simply due to be replaced by two after being sent out. Also his refusal to take to western medication and treatment during his illness which later led to his death though after being treated. Also, Sikira left AlhajiArigbabuwo to another man with the thought that she may soon be forgotten with the way things went in the house, house, illiteracy made her think that she could still prevail over Alhaji even in the local magistrate. As for dirt, the picture of animal domestication in the corridor as well as the veranda of Alhaji’s house and the agboole (community compound) is a good proof.

The usage of proverbs and idiomatic expressions is also of importance here though most of them are based on superstitions. For example, Motara believed beating a boy with a broom would make his penis to go back inside his body (.140). This, however hilarious makes a deeper sense than it naturally sounds; a boy’s penis going back inside simply signifies affects him psychologically, thereby, reducing his self-esteem. Also, the chairman during one of the party’s meeting comes up to reprimand with two men quarrelling saying ‘we will not say a child will die, we should give him his father’s scrotum to play with’ (.38)By this, he tries to lay a standard of discipline in the party meetings thereby sending a warning signal to Iyiola, one of their members in power who had refused to come to party meetings over time; these goes beyond a statement involving the mind picture of a child and his father’s scrotum but goes ahead to connote that some disciplinary measures must be established in the party.

Also, by literal translation by the author, we are able to know how much the Yoruba language can do even to the extent of stylishly raining insult on someone. For example, Chief Akeweje, an elder politician in the party abused verbally Chief Lanihun, saying: ‘I just thought people are tired of those teeth of yours which are scattered like the welder’s fire’. By this he meant to describe the poor dentition of the latter because a welder’s fire naturally is not what could be touched with bear hands and also, because a welder’s fire usually comes up in sparks when contacted with iron.

We have come to see semiotics not just as a linguistic field but as a literary theoryand if anyway to be considered as a linguistic concept, its sociolinguistic feature would hinder such judgement. Attempting its definition and principles, we could see what it entails. With the literary works carefully selected namely:
Les Soleils Des Independences (Ahmadou Kourouma), Second-Class Citizens (Buchi Emecheta) and Under The Brown Rusted Roofs (Abimbola Aduni Adelakun), we have been able to see its manifestation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adelakun, Abimbola A. Under The Brown Rusted Roofs, Krafts books Limted, 2008.
Emecheta, Buchi. Second-Class Citizen, Allison and Busby Ltd., 1974.
John, Lyons, Semantics 1. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978.
Ferdinand, de Saussure. General Linguistics, Peter Owen London, 1964.
Johnstone, Barbara. Discourse Analysis, Blackwell Publishing, 2010.
Levinson, Stephen C. Pragmatics, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

TAKE A SHOT AT IT

2018-01-16T12:14:00.000-08:00

FINISHING STRONG

Having had my bath on a windy Monday morning, the burden of the word of God strongly laid on my heart kept me thinking on these words: for what course must I run?, in the stillness of heart alone with God; He took me through the volumes of his words, showing me a man who could confidently say; “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” so, I further thought; how was this made possible? As I fell into a deep sleep.

Awakened by the honking of a car on the street, I rushed to freshen up and later took my lunch as I left the house for a youth fellowship; on getting there they were discussing the same burden of the word that kept burning within me. As this young chaps explained what it meant to them rather what they understood the phrase to be, the spirit of the lord came unto me again and said: “Grace for what course must you run?, how can you finish this course?’, then the mystery of the word came to me(my course is my purpose of existence), so it kept me thinking as comments passing through this congregation filtered through my ears and nestled on my heart as it all began to make sense.

Still seated and speechless, it occurred to me how this man I was told of made the crown of righteousness. It began to unfold in the eyes of my understanding as one peels the leaf of a cabbage plant one after the other. This man whose name is Paul was a man of passion and confidence, his eyes were set as a flint towards his course(taking the gospel to the gentiles),he was sold-out to this singular vision by the amount and quality of love expended towards it. Then figuratively, I was shown another man called Joshua who made the difference in his course and was referred to as a burning stick snatched out from fire, Paul was likewise a fire brand who illuminated his generation through his course on earth. This course of his was a fire shut up in his bones. So I thought; if he was a young man how come the weight of sin that easily besets a youth wasn’t his lot? Then the burden of the word came upon me saying: “let no man despise thy youth… give attendance to reading, exhortation, doctrine… for in doing so you will save thyself and those hear you”(those your course is particular bout). With a sigh of relief I smiled and said to myself: “let your eyes be single and your whole body will have light… it is good for a young man to bear the yoke while he is young”, putting the puzzle together the image of the word became vivid and I understood by the hand of the lord upon me that while in my single hood I can be fire branded, sold-out with love to that purpose of my life with daily meditation of the word of life then I can have good success(finish strong) and then be ready to be offered up empty.

Having seen how that man of old truly pressed towards the mark, fought the good fight of faith, finished his course and obtained the crown,as I caught a glimpse of my reflection on my phone’s screen all I saw was a teary broken look stunned at this revelation as I began to mutter this words “must I empty handed and meet my Savior so…” THINK MY FRIEND!!!

Yemisi Grace Odebamike

SEMIOTIC ELEMENTS IN SELECTED WORKS OF SOME AFRICAN WRITERS

2014-09-24T00:51:00.000-07:00

European studies,

Postgraduate school,
University of Ibadan.

15th September, 2014.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The history behind semiotics testifies that it meant at first, a medical diagnosis. A study that identified the ways that various symptoms indicate the diseases that underlie them. It was not applied to the study of relation between human symbols and reality. Aristotle (384-322 BC) took it to investigate the relation between forms and reality more closely. He pointed out that words for instance, do indeed refer to real things, which helps to classify the world into real categories e.g. plants versus animals versus objects and so on.

St. Augustine (AD 354-430) defined a natural science as one that is found literally in nature such as bodily symptoms, the rustling of leaves, the colours of plants, as are the signals that animals emit in response to physical and emotional state. He distinguished this type of sign from a conventional sign, which is a sign made by humans. According to him, words, gestures and symbols are examples of conventional signs though in modern-day semiotic theory, these have been distinguished into verbal and nonverbal-words and other linguistic structures (expressions, phrases, etc.) could be termed as verbal signs; also, drawings and gestures are examples of non-verbal signs. As St. Augustine emphasized, conventional signs serve a fundamental psychological need that allow humans to encode and thus, familiarize with the world through routine recognitions.
He further defined sacred signs such as miracles, as signs containing messages from God. He believes these signs can only be understood on faith. He also emphasized that the whole process of understanding what signs mean is partly based on social conventions and partly on individual reactions to them. This idea was consistent with the hermeneutic tradition that had already been established by Clement of Alexandria (AD 150-215?), the Greek theologian and early Father of the Church. Hermeneutics was (and still is) the study of texts by taking into account their linguistic features and the historical contexts in which they were written.
His views were not known until the eleventh century, when interest in human signs was rekindled by traveling Arab scholars who had translated the works of Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek thinkers. The result was the movement known as Scholasticim. Using Aristotle as their inspiration, the Scholastics asserted that signs captured truths, not constructed them. But within this movement there were some—the so-called nominalists—who argued that “truth” was a matter of subjective opinion and that signs captured at best, only illusory and highly variable human versions of it. John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) and William of Ockham (c.1285-c. 1349) for instance, stressed that signs only referred to other signs, rather than to actual things. The great theologian St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) countered however, that signs referred to real things since they were derived from sense impressions. But like St. Augustine, he asserted that sacred signs revealed truths that were beyond rational comprehension and therefore had to be accepted on faith.

About four centuries later, the British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) finally introduced the formal study of signs into philosophy in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), calling it semeiotics for the first time. Locke clearly anticipated that it would allow philosophers to study the relation between concepts and reality much more precisely. But the task he laid out for philosophy remained virtually unnoticed until the late nineteenth century, when the ideas of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) became the platform on which an autonomous field of inquiry was gradually constructed in the twentieth century. In his Cours de linguistique générale (1916), Saussure used the term semiology to designate the field. He coined it in obvious analogy to other scientific terms ending in-logy, such as psychology, biology, anthropology, (from Greek logos “word,” “study”). Somehow, Saussure’s term betrayed a belief in the supremacy of language among sign systems. He puts it this way:
“Language is a system of signs that expresses ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, polite formulas, military signals, etc. But it is the most important of all these systems” (Saussure 1916:16).

WHAT IS SEMIOTICS?

Semiotics which deals with the study of signs was propounded by Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Peirce. Although the two agree on the meaning of semiotics as the production and interpretation of meanings made by the deployment of acts and objects which function as signs in relation in relation to other sign, they defer in their concepts and conclusions. For Saussure, semiotics is based more on the concept of linguistics signifier and signified while Peirce’s is based on the logic of an object (referent) and reference (idea begotten by the sign). Saussure was less concerned with the referent instead emphasized the arbitrary nature of the relationships between the signifier and signified as well as the differences between signifiers in the production of memory.
Semiotics involves the study of not only of what we refer to as signs in everyday speech, but of anything which stands for something else which can be in form of words, images, sounds gestures and objects.
‘Signs do not just convey meanings, but constitute a medium in which meanings are constructed. Semiotics helps us to realize that meaning is not passively absorbed but arise only in the active process of interpretation …’ (Routledge 2006).
Semiotics literary criticism also called literary semiotics is the approach to literary criticism informed by the theory of signs pioneered by Ferdinand de Saussure. It is concerned with a formal analysis of narrative forms which would resemble a literary syntax. A semiotic analysis of a literary text deals, instead of themes and general meaning with the way in which meaning is produced by the structure of independent signs, by codes and conventions. As a linguistic sign, the test has an arbitrary nature and is based in conventions.
In semiotic literary criticism, two things are important; signified and signifier or signification. The first gives the mental presentation of a thing or an idea while the latter helps in the understanding of the given sign while taking into consideration the context or the environment in which the sign is used i.e. the context of the situation and the context of the culture. The situational context interprets the signs in its immediate environment of the text i.e. cultural context of the characters used in the text. Signifier or signification is an instrument that serves to interpret and bring out the hidden sense of symbols in the text. It explains and elucidates the importance of the use of metaphors, metonymies, hyperboles, personifications, idiomatic expressions, proverbs, etc. Semiotic methods have been identified in two folds which are synchronic and diachronic methods.

• Synchronic method: It is the study of signs at a given point in time.
• Diachronic method: it is the study of how signs change, in form and meaning over time.

PRINCIPLES OF SEMIOTICS

1. Culture: Culture is the way of life of a people. It is the shared beliefs, customs, values, practices and social behaviour of a group. culture in relation to semiotics as described by discourse analysts, focuses on the ways in which the shape of discourse is determined by social and situational factors. Culture- specific language ideology may make purpose mere or less relevant to how people produce and interprets discourse in particular relations and settings.
2. Signification: It is the meaning of a concept or an idea brought by a word, an event or other phenomenon. Signification happens in two ways namely denotation and connotation. Denotation is the surface or literal meaning of a word while connotation is the more profound and figurative meaning of it. Connotation helps to expand the application of signs or words creatively. For example, the word ‘house’. The denotation of the word house could signify where someone lives while the connotation could signify in sentences below:

The house is in session— legislative assembly, quorum
The house roared in laughter— audience in a theatre
They sleep at one of the houses in UI— dormitory, hostel

3. Symbol: A symbol is something that stands for or represents something else, especially an object representing an abstraction. On this note, Ferdinand de Saussure identifies the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, that is to say, the conventionality of the relationship between form and meaning where he explains that there may be several forms to just a meaning. For example concept ‘house’ remains the same to different groups of people in the world but the way it is called is different. However, a symbol is a sign which would lose the character which makes it a sign if there were no interpretant.
4. Icon: an icon is a sign which tends to possess the attribute which renders it significant, even though its object had no existence.
5. Index: according to C.S Pierce, an index is a sign which would, at once lose the character which makes it a sign if its object were removed, but would not lose that character if there were no interpretant. For example, we will be too quick to assume that smoke is fire or that someone with a slurred speech is drunk. We should note that the presence of smoke does not necessarily indicate that there is fire somewhere and that someone’s slurred is points to drunkenness.
6. Idealism: This is a principle that there is an objectively existing world which is not dependent on our minds, and that people are able to understand aspects of that world through perception.
7. Conceptualism: By this we mean to refer to any feature of semantics which defines the meaning of a word or other expression to be the concept associated with it in the mind of the speaker and hearer.
8. Nominalism: As concept could be in form of a word or sign, nominalism says that the apprehension of a concept in the mind is directly relative to its first intuitive apprehension.
9. Syntactic: Syntactic studies how signs are related to each other.
10. Semantics: It is simply the study of meanings. It also studies symbols, signs and what they represent. However, it studies how these signs.
11. Pragmatics: Pragmatics is concerned with how linguistic signs are related to people, that is, the effect of a signal on an individual. This part of semiotics is has a lot to pair with sociolinguistics.
According to Stephen C. Levinson (2003)

“Pragmatics is the study of those relations between language and context that are grammaticalized or encoded in the structure of a language. In a more implicit form and with a notion of appropriateness or felicity; it is the study of the ability of language users to pair sentences with the context in which they would be appropriate.
However, the relationship between the last three elements is such that if in a serious work, the notable reference is made to the speaker or to the user of the language, then it is assigned to the field of pragmatics. Then, if we go from here to the user of the language to analyse only the expressions and their designate, we are in the field of semantics and if at last, we move from here to analyse only the relations between expressions, we will be tending towards ( logical) syntax.

Semiotic criticism of LES SOLEILS DES INDEPENDENCE by Ahmadou Kourouma
The novel narrates the life of Fama after the independence of his country. Fama is a prince of Togobala, a village in the Horodougou regionof the imaginary country the Cotes of Ebenes. He fights soul and body for the independence of his country from France. Unfortunately, he did not benefit from the fruit of his effort because after the independence the new administrators did not recognize his past participations. He lives on the foods distributed to the visitors invited for funeral ceremonies and small scale business if his sterile wife. He decided to go the city after being imprisoned and release to leave in the village after the death of his cousin Lassina. The journey was fatal for him because he was killed on his way.
From the title of the novel Les Soleils des Independences. Les Soleils in this context does not signify the sun but an ‘era’- a period’ after independence.
Signs of language deconstruction in les soleils des independences
In the book the author through the deliberate use of borrowing, neology and pidgin, portrays the concept of deconstruction of the imperial language which is Français.
"Famaetsesdeux femmes occupaient la petite pièce avec un seul lit de bambou, un seultara". (p.151)
Tara: traditional mat in Malinke country used in place of "la natte" the standard french.
"Les chefs de Toukorodormait, ivre de dolo au milieu de ses sujets".
Dolo: traditional bier from corn.

The semiotic elements in Buchi Emecheta’s work Second-Class Citizen (1975).
It is a literary work that tells us the story a passionate young girl of Ibuza who was born and breed in the city of Lagos. Her story which was opened to us of her life from age 8 as she guessed into her childhood, adolescence and marital ordeals.
The title Second-Class Citizen implies her life as a “deuxieme sexe”- all she suffered based on gender deprivation, illiteracy level of her society, lack of social amenities in her homeland and how she felt unloved and unwanted from infancy <her parents were expecting a male child> and her husband saw her as his personal ATM.
The plotting was intelligently coined to create an imagery of her experiences such as:
 "a cold welcome”: it makes us imagine the level of interpersonal relationship that exist amongst the English people. Their persona is as cold and unwelcoming as their season- winter. England was cold in every possible way- culturally as its citizens.
“population control”: Adah had to try to take her life in her hands- health; she had to try out one of the birth control / or family planning methods to protect herself from the overpopulation experienced in their one room apartment with her meagre salary to cater for their monthly feeding budget, health care and family emergencies. These are things that should naturally be the burden of a government to curb inflation or poverty in a country.
‘United kingdom’- a place of great civilization, prosperity and a nation that has gotten to its peak symbolized the pinnacle of her ambition / dreams.
“But she made a secret vow to herself that she would go to this United Kingdom one day. Her arrival there would be the pinnacle of her ambition” pg. (17)
“Lucifer”- in her dream her husband became her personal chief spirit of evil and adversary of her very existence; he was the master of the Hell of a life she was living. It painted Francis in the best way a pained heart would describe a tormentor, a manipulator and oppressor who had become an itch on her very skin.
“Girl”- it denotes a slave- a domesticated being, sex object and child bearer and care taker. The African society were this work draws her relevance does not regard the girl child as worthy of birth as a male child is worth more than seven (7) female children – patriarchal society.
“Presence”- was depicted as the persona of Adah – her zeal, passion, determination and inspiration to attain all her desire and glide like the eagle through the wind- situations.
Linguistic defects used as a tool of imagery in a situational context:
“Breeding”- it was created from the distortion of a word <bleeding> caused by a linguistic defect called Spoonerism< the transposition of initial consonants in a pair of words>. It was intended to create the image of what the French calls mère pondeuse or chaud lapin to describe the successive child bearing of Adah; c'estunevraie pondeuse - she breeds like a rabbit.
“Good Rord”- as against <good Lord>, it was used to describe how fertile and effective Francis’s penis was in making Adah breed children.
“A face like an O”- it is an expression used to create a mental image of the physical facial feature of the people of the Japanese Archipelago- a round looking face.

Analysis and interpretation of UNDER THE BROWN RUSTED ROOFS.

Another work for consideration is Abiombola Adunni Adelakun’s Under The Brown Rusted Roofs where the author uses several imageries to reveal the way of life within the Ibadan metropolis in late 1970s to the early 1980s. The title begins with a prepositional phrase Under The Brown Rusted Roofs; we can start by digging into what could be the nearest possible message of the author. The concept brown in this context simply refers not just to a natural colour but of course the colour of the African man’s skin which though in contrast to the white man’s skin is generally referred to as black. Also, it is scientific just as it is logical for a rusted roof to be brown, this means however that for a rusted roof to be brown, it must first have gone through many years of utility without repair or replacement before it is termed rusted. However, it is significant to know that before the duration of years within which this the author sets her work, the roofs had been rusted, within those years of political and military era, the roofs were still rusted and also, since that time till now, the roofs of these houses with location and sight that gives a traveller the impression that he has entered Ibadan on arrival haven’t still changed from being rusted.
This simple interpretation tells us something of importance; the work Under The Brown Rusted roofs is a work that doubtlessly characterizes postmodernism, feminism and of course post colonialism which helps feature the characters involved that in bid not to give in to western education (cultural decolonization) and whatever it brings along, these indigenes find themselves still wallowing in their primitive lifestyle.
Anyway, one good thing about the houses under these roofs is that they are still strong. One easily wonders why despite the rustication that has pervaded these metropolis, the people (houses) living under remain convincingly and emotionally resilient and unbreakable, still thriving over years. Whether they are corrupt or stubborn is not our concern here at least they have a culture with which they identify. This is as depicted by Arigbabuwo as a child asking his father that ‘those houses…...the roofs are rusty…..they won’t collapse one day? His father responded telling him that the roofs under them (houses) are strong.
Therefore, the rusted roofs is significant to the age-long life of corruption, illiteracy, dirt, immorality and politics of polygamy that engulfs the beere, ojee area of the Ibadan indigenes. Illiteracy made a character like Mulika forget that she had missed her period when pregnant for Rafiu, the also, Baba n’sale believed that any wife who messes up in his corridor (house) was simply due to be replaced by two after being sent out. Also his refusal to take to western medication and treatment during his illness which later led to his death though after being treated. Also, Sikira left AlhajiArigbabuwo to another man with the thought that she may soon be forgotten with the way things went in the house, house, illiteracy made her think that she could still prevail over Alhaji even in the local magistrate. As for dirt, the picture of animal domestication in the corridor as well as the veranda of Alhaji’s house and the agboole (community compound) is a good proof.

The usage of proverbs and idiomatic expressions is also of importance here though most of them are based on superstitions. For example, Motara believed beating a boy with a broom would make his penis to go back inside his body (.140). This, however hilarious makes a deeper sense than it naturally sounds; a boy’s penis going back inside simply signifies affects him psychologically, thereby, reducing his self-esteem. Also, the chairman during one of the party’s meeting comes up to reprimand with two men quarrelling saying ‘we will not say a child will die, we should give him his father’s scrotum to play with’ (.38)By this, he tries to lay a standard of discipline in the party meetings thereby sending a warning signal to Iyiola, one of their members in power who had refused to come to party meetings over time; these goes beyond a statement involving the mind picture of a child and his father’s scrotum but goes ahead to connote that some disciplinary measures must be established in the party.

Also, by literal translation by the author, we are able to know how much the Yoruba language can do even to the extent of stylishly raining insult on someone. For example, Chief Akeweje, an elder politician in the party abused verbally Chief Lanihun, saying: ‘I just thought people are tired of those teeth of yours which are scattered like the welder’s fire’. By this he meant to describe the poor dentition of the latter because a welder’s fire naturally is not what could be touched with bear hands and also, because a welder’s fire usually comes up in sparks when contacted with iron.

We have come to see semiotics not just as a linguistic field but as a literary theoryand if anyway to be considered as a linguistic concept, its sociolinguistic feature would hinder such judgement. Attempting its definition and principles, we could see what it entails. With the literary works carefully selected namely:
Les Soleils Des Independences (Ahmadou Kourouma), Second-Class Citizens (Buchi Emecheta) and Under The Brown Rusted Roofs (Abimbola Aduni Adelakun), we have been able to see its manifestation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adelakun, Abimbola A. Under The Brown Rusted Roofs, Krafts books Limted, 2008.
Emecheta, Buchi. Second-Class Citizen, Allison and Busby Ltd., 1974.
John, Lyons, Semantics 1. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978.
Ferdinand, de Saussure. General Linguistics, Peter Owen London, 1964.
Johnstone, Barbara. Discourse Analysis, Blackwell Publishing, 2010.
Levinson, Stephen C. Pragmatics, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

A MARXIST APPROACH TO OUSEMANE SEMBENE'S God's Bits of Woods

2014-09-23T23:55:00.004-07:00

A MARXIST CRITICISM OF GOD’S BITS OF WOOD WRITTEN BY SEMBENE OUSMANE AND PUBLISHED IN (1960).

Yemisi Grace ODEBAMIKE

137442

Department of European Studies,

Postgraduate school,

University of Ibadan,

Nigeria.

Date: 8th September, 2014.

Marxist criticism is a type of criticism in which literary works are viewed as the product of work and whose critics emphasizes the role of class and ideology as they reflect, propagate and even challenge the prevailing social order. Marxist critics view text as a material product to be understood in broadly historical terms (in the realm of production and consumption-economics).

The Marxist revolution speaks of the continuing conflict between the classes that will lead to upheaval and revolution by oppressed peoples and form the ground work for a new order of society are economics where capitalism is abolished. The revolution will be led by the working class under the guidance of intellects, when the elite and middle class are overthrown; the intellectuals will compose as equal society where everyone owns everything (socialism).

Basic tenets of this theory that will be isolated successively in Sembene Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood published in (1960) are the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist (owning) class i.e. the struggle of the classes which leads to equality of shared wealth; major differences in lifestyle between the classes; how are the working class oppressed kept from rebellion- the strategies the capitalist used to oppress them; how the oppressed are denied equal reward of work done- capitalist are justified by their superiority; how does the oppressed attract sympathy in the work; how feminine empowerment leads to economic power and eventually leading to political power; how is religion used to oppress the oppressed and how are betrayers or traitorous acts portrayed in the work.

Sembene Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood is an attack on colonialism and the brutal savage forms it took in Africa-Senegal, nevertheless we can’t overlook the heavy element of the Marxist theory that abound in the work. His work is focused on European imperialism, hierarchy of social classes: European managerial class and Africa working class (since imperialism involves the violent maltreatment of the natives). In the knowledge of this theory (Marxism) God’s Bits of Wood will be examined, evaluated and appreciated.

Class exploitation which led to struggles- strike of the trainmen as described by Ousmane, he talked on the first strike between the Bambara natives and the European managers which was a flop but the second strike lasted six months in which the strikers established a Union through which it presented its demands to the Europeans who profited from their labour. The strike was flared up because the natives realised how much they have been oppressed and it resulted in a STRIKE to fight for the amelioration of their standard of living.

“It is true that we have our trade, but it does not bring us what it should. We are been robbed, our wages are so low that there is no longer any difference between ourselves and animals”

The oppressed (trainmen) were soon joined in the strike by the masons, civil servants, coal miners and even the men of shell oil i.e. in our modern days what we call a nationwide strike, which intensified their struggle for equality which of cause wasn’t on a platter of gold (hunger, death, thirst, illness and dehumanizing treatment), yet they pressed on to their hallmark and prevailed over the superior class.

Obvious differences in the lifestyle of the classes in this literary work are of great significances to the theory. The superior class earned more wages than the producers (work force), they lived in the decent areas of the city called the European quarters while the working class lived in the Bambara quarters which was littered with piles of old cans, heaps of excrements, tiny remains of cats, rats and of chickens disputed by birds and skinny children with swollen bellies clothed with filth. The houses were nothing to write home about as the structures are bent and been supported by tree trunks, beggars litter the street and children scavenge for food. In fact, the city of Thies was synonymous to a place of poverty, impoverishment and poor infrastructure. The character Bakary was tuberculous from the many years behind the firebox of the train and his skin of his face had turned grey. The superior class (the regional director-M. Dejean, director of the repair shop- M. Isnard, chief assistant- M. Victor and Leblanc- the old hand ) worked in managerial offices which were beautiful, good homes in a serene environment and had natives who did the menial works for them.

N’Deye Touti had a conflicting personality or suffered from cultural and personality inferiority complex. She wasn’t proud of her heritage and her educational exposure too made her desire more than she had. Most times she soliloquize on her dream house and family and was elated about the fire that had engulfed the scene had held her childhood she had been so ashamed of.

“The memory was as sharp as the pain of an open wound, she was almost ready to bless the fire which had destroyed the witness of her childhood and her shame. She had a vision of houses painted in clear, fresh colours, of gardens filled with flowers, children in European clothes playing in tidy courtyards. But what she saw around her was something else again. Men and women were already prowling busily through the ruins… while naked children whose skin was the colour as the ashes ran about as if it were a holiday” pg. (115 &116)

Her society was a direct contrast of her dreams and she was of cause ashamed of it. She longed to marry someone who will take her out of her misery.

The market place is described as an eye sore on pg. 15 paraphrased.

“The market was swarmed with denizen- beggars and the flies, who were of every age and carried great blue-green flies that floated between them and the canteens in the market square”

The oppression of the workers is eminent all through the pages of this work has the author had carefully crafted the happenings into the plots in sequences. As the strike of the trainmen began, the European directors, even the black bureaucrats were already devising means to break the backs of the strikers. The superior class understood clearly that when a man’s basic needs are taken forcefully from him his strength or essence is gone. This motive was well employed by the Europeans in this work as seen in (pg. 32).

“The days passed, and the nights. There was no news, except what every passing hour brought to every home, and that was always the same: the foodstuffs were gone, the meager savings eaten up, and there was no money in the house”

Food was gone from every home and the capitalist had it heavy on them as even store keepers were not allowed to give foodstuffs on credit to the strikers.

“They could go and ask for credit, but they knew what the storekeeper would say. You already owe me this much, and as it is I won’t have enough to pay my bills. Why don’t you do as they say? Why don’t you go back to work?” pg. 32

As nights and days passed hunger began to prevail which brought fear in hearts.

“I cannot- I cannot! They’ll close my shop! Tell them to go back!”

The strikers were denied water the very essence of life.

“… Well, what do they teach you in school then?

‘Everything- everything about life’ “and the strike is not part of life? Closing the shops and turning off the water- that is not part of life?’” pg. (47)

Water inevitably became a scarce commodity in the workers’ quarters and a commodity that came with a price too.

“How much do you ask for the jug of water? Five pieces, of five francs each, woman. Five pieces? The price has gone up again? Woman, I must now go all the way to Pikine to find water, and Pikine is far” pg. (54)

Psychologically because their lives has been webbed around the trains and their workshops, they long for the sounds and smoke that came with the trains to fill up the emptiness the strike brought with it- pg. 76&77. The pressure or demands of our jobs too are a form of oppression as it engulfs our very being. The consequences of these oppressive tools on the strikers were just inevitable as hunger, thirst, death and malnourishment- kwashiorkor became the order of the day.

“… but her primary concerns was for N’Dole, her next-to-last. The child wobbled unsteadily forward, on a pair of rickety legs, his shinning belly was so distended that it appeared to precede him, giving the impression that the skin might at any moment burst like a too full bladder… this ceaseless hunger, which swelled the bellies of the children while it defleshed their limbs and bent their shoulders”

They did anything for survival as they became desperate. Mame Sofi used religion as a strong point to appease the Toucouleur water carrier in pg. 54-55 paraphrased

“Mame Sofi asked the water carrier ‘do you believe in God?’ and he replied Yes, she replied Al Hamdou Lilah as if relieved and she added ‘I owe you five pieces of five francs each’ after she had asked him to pour his water into the family’s earthen vessel. The Toucouleur insisted he wasn’t selling on credit”

Vendredi- the ram, was killed by Ramatoulaye after it had eaten the only available rice in the house. Its meat became a feast for the entire household and all that came around pg. (73-74), for a reserved character like Ramatoulaye; the fear of starvation aroused her survival instinct.

“they scarcely recognized the woman beside them as the Ramatoulaye they had always known, and asked themselves where she had found this new strength. She has always been quiet and unassuming and gentle with the children and never took part in arguments at the street fountain”

The youths of the Bambara quarters were not left out. The supposed ‘workforce- apprentices’ of the Thies people became idle and as the saying goes ‘an idle hand is the devil’s workshop’. They began to engage themselves on stealing escapades of chickens from the European quarters and from Aziz the storekeeper, using catapults to aim at birds and lizards and the last straw that broke the camel’s back was their attack on every last object in the European quarters and police station.

“They had found a new game to replace all others. They waited until darkness and enlisted on their side, and then, moving in the little groups to throw the guards and the soldiers off their track, they invaded the European quarter… everything that shone in the night was a target, from windows to lamp post.” Pg. (159)

Something astonishing sprang up in the face of this oppressions, a new order in which the women folks who had been handicapped became politically and economically liberated. The strike which affected their husbands steered them to rise to the occasion to defend their homes, children and their very existence.

The economy of Senegal was caked on the backs and hands of the natives (Bamako- Thies- Dakar) yet the proverb that says “one works as an elephant and eats like an ant” is a better description of the standard of living amongst this people. The Europeans had a better ride on the backs of the black working class who were the majority of the populace.

“We’re the ones who do the work… The same work the white man do. Why then should they be paid more? Because they are white? And when they are sick, why should they be taken care of while we and our families are left to starve? Because we are black? In what way is a white child better than a black child? In what way is a white worker better than a black worker? They tell us we have the same rights, but it is a lie! Only the engines we run tell the truth- and they don’t know the difference between a white man and a black. It does no good to look at our pay slips and say our wages are too small.” Pg. (8)

This position in which black men found themselves led to their demand of equal work, equal pay, old age pensions, proper housing and family allowances as their counterparts enjoy.

The working class suffered a great deal on the path they chose for themselves for a future they considered not farfetched, where their lives would be worthy of living, food on their tables, hospital allowances at their beck and call of their families, pensions at the end of active service, good clothes on their children’s back and a decent environment to live in.

“for more than four months now we have been on strike, and we all know why. It has been a hard life in that time- without food, without water, without even fire. It is a hard path for a man, harder still for the women and the children, but we chose it and we trod it” pg. (216)

Deaths abound in this period of their lives as darkness gloom over every household, hunger came knocking and sickness was a shadow to them. Despite all, they forged on in their struggle for a better financial empowerment, never to be victims again but to be in control of what they worked for. They fought to the end at all cost and triumphed over every of their plight because even when fear came it was dispelled as quickly as it came, even when strike breakers arose they dealt with it in their own simple way and even when their opposition sought to create a division it was too late as fraternity and brotherhood ran through their veins towards their CAUSE even when imprisoned- they suffered dehumanizing things for their cause such as been imprisoned in a dark room with their faeces and urine bowls. Sounkare the old watchman had desired to eat rat.

The women could be seen as a strong force or as the back bone of the strike. From the first day of the strike, the women organized by Dieynaba at the market place launched the initial riot.

Dieynaba had rallied the women of the market place, and like a band of Amazons they came to the rescue, armed with clubs, with iron bars, and bottles.” Pg. (22)

When the strike prolonged men frequented the union’s building and the women held the home fronts- catered for every need by selling all their jewelleries and their ceremonial tunics. Even the men began to realise that this hard times- strike was bringing about a new breed of men as well as women. Women were now been consulted and asked to attend meetings at the union such as the trial of Diara the traitor of the strikers.

But I have told the women to come, Tiemoko said the have important things to say.” Pg. (91)

The N’Diayene women is a strong force in the strike as they fought the police men who came to arrest Ramatoulaye, they attacked the squad with straws and coals on fire and when Ramatoulaye was taken to the station they followed en masse as a support; even when the firemen came with water to flush them out of the station they stood their grounds in their frightened state.

"Stay where you are! Mame Sofi screamed. There is no water for fires, but there’s plenty for us! Just stay sitting down and it can’t hurt you.” Pg. (122)

Penda became the first female member of the strike committee, she championed the women’s march on Dakar from Thies.

“I speak in the name of all the women but I am just the voice they have chosen to tell you what they have decided to do. Yesterday we all laughed together, men and women and today we weep together, but for us women this strike still means the possibility of a better life tomorrow. We owe it to ourselves to hold up our heads and not to give in now. So we have decided that tomorrow we will march together to Dakar” pg. (185)

If the women had not come alive to take up the reins of duty when it called or remained supportive, the strike would have failed for hunger and thirst would have driven everyone crazy and homes in disarray.

The African culture holds religion as a strong force or a necessity for a successful living, therefore the Imams and the Priest are held in high esteem. The European leaders understood this mind set of this people- the natives and set their leaders in their own favour to emphasize that they were wrong and should be made to end the strike. Religion became a tool of oppression to the oppressed. The Imam made women depressed as he accused them of killing Houdia M’Baye.

“God has decided that we should live side by side with the French toubabs, and the French teaching us things we have not known and showing us how to make the things we need. It is not up to us to rebel against the will of God… for my part, I plan to preach a sermon on the subject to the entire community next Friday” pg. (124)

To dispel the emotional trauma caused by the religious clerics Bakayoko endeared the people to himself as against a God/cleric who didn’t care. Karl Marx explains that reality is material and not spiritual because we are socially constructed and not spiritual beings.

“The Imam spoke to you of God. Does that mean he doesn’t know that people who are hungry and thirsty are likely to forget the way to the mosque?” pg. (217)

In the characters of LeBlanc and Diara we can find elements of alignment and fragmentation. Leblanc owned up to his colleagues that he has been sending money to the strikers.

“… I’ll tell you something, though. I sent them 20,000 francs to help out with the strike… I did it twice, I sent them a ten-thousand-franc note.” Pg. (169)

The Europeans turned the clerics against their people since some crumbs falls of the white man’s table to them.

“Infuriated by the workers’ resistance to their injunctions, the imams turned the full force of their wrath on the members of the strike committee, accusing them of responsibility for every crime they could think of- atheism, alcoholism, prostitution, infant mortality. They even predicted that these infidels would bring about the end of the world” pg. (204)

Diara who was among the trainmen who voted for the strike was accused of maltreating / humiliating the women folks by sending them off the trains because they supported the strikers- their husbands and sons; he was equally shamed as he faced trial like an infidel.

The story line of Germinal by Emile Zola will be illustrated as a related text to the main text and the same theory can serve to analyse the both text.

The miners were oppressed as the trainmen in the main text. Similarities between the strikes of this different works can’t be eluded as their struggles, oppressions and sufferings took the same forms. They earned low wages, women participated actively in the strike- and this calls to mind the Aba Women’s Riot in Nigeria (1929) and the women’s march on Versailles in France (1789) ; oppression has no restriction to borders as for every action there is a reaction, Etienne Lantier and Bakayoko are the activist or strike propeller of the strike as prophesied by Karl Marx- a leader will arise from among the oppressed class who will pioneer a revolution that will turn their tide. Common tool of oppression in these works are starvation, thirst, and weaponry by the armed forces to attack the native. However, the strike ended on a tragic note in Germinal and on a joyful and triumphant note.

Class struggle isn’t just a niche in imperialism, it occurs in our day to day work environment. In our immediate society in Nigeria we have Workers’ Union/Association that saddles itself with the responsibility of its member’s welfare, pension scheme, leave bonuses, health care scheme, salary payment etc. for example: the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) embarked on an indefinite strike on the grounds of a 24 count demand from the Federal Government of Nigeria; the latter threatened to retrench all residential doctors Nationwide for not taking the initiative to call of the strike as their OATH to Humanity demands of them when the Ebola Virus broke out in the Nation but the association stood its ground that none of its members will acknowledge the memo to the treat. Eventually, the strike was suspended on a mutual bases that their plight will be attended to and they returned to work to combat the viral disease. Although in this work the trainmen were oppressed by the Europeans but in our society workers or the workforce of the society are been oppressed or exploited by their employers in the world of capitalism; even the civil servant in our days suffer under their government employers such delayed salary payment, tax methods- pay as you earn, poor infrastructure and unconducive work environments.

In this write up we can say that our society indeed has been and is still a dialectical society (the rich class and the poor class), residential areas are even divided into this category (ghetto versus Victoria garden city; rural and urban- the South-south of Nigeria suffers from oil spillage from where the nation gets its Gross Domestic Product but the revenue is used to develop the capitals), national wealth stays in the centre and drops down to the margin.

Social amenities are readily available in the capital unlike the suburbs, the suburbs are technologically lagging as against the level of exposure and development experienced in big cities. Exploitation exist in our day to day lives, how we perceive our relationships to be- husbands oppressing their wives, children revolting their parents, boyfriends and girlfriends cheating on themselves, businessmen swindling their clients, clerics using religion as a psychoanalytical tool on the minds of their congregation to syphon money from them or to make them be seen as demi gods.

Truth, integrity, sincerity, trust and concern for mankind, ecosystem and the universe will be a starting point for equity, true liberation and sense of collective ownership of the world.

Works Cited

Ousmane, Sembene. God’s Bits of Wood, African Writers Series (63), 1960.

Tunde, Ayeleru. “Theoretical Approaches to Literature” Course Note on Marxism on August 11, 2014.

http://www.enotes.com/topics/gods-bits-wood.

http://free-academic-essay.blogspot.nl/2014/05/gods-bits-0f-wood.html?m=1

TAKE A SHOT AT IT

2012-02-06T13:49:00.000-08:00

FINISHING STRONG

Yemisi Grace Odebamike

MULTILINGUALISM

2011-05-26T18:32:00.001-07:00

A TERM PAPER ON MULTILINGALISM IN NIGERIA –A CURSE OR A BLESSING, DEPARTMENT OF EUROPEAN STUDIES, FACULTY OF ARTS, UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN.
INTRODUCTION TO MULTILINGALISM
Multilingualism is a sociolinguistic phenomenon that arises as a result of language contact. It is a situation in which two i.e. bilingualism specifically or more languages operates within the same context.
In order to fully appreciate this question, it will be proper to have a historical knowledge of how we came to be a multilingual country and also what the concept of multilingualism means the historical background of Nigeria’s multilingualism, as well as the advantages and disadvantages it presents.
FEATURES OF MULTILINGUALISM
In multilingual countries, majority of people speak three or more languages:
 Their mother tongue
 Other local or community languages
 The national languages as well as an ex-colonial language like English, French e.t.c.
Multilingualism makes its speakers think about their own patterns of language use and the links between language usage, culture and identity.

DEFINITION OF THE KEY WORD “MULTILINGUALISM”
Multilingualism as defined in relation to a country or state is a situation where several languages are spoken or the act of using or promoting the use of multiple languages, either by individual speakers or more.
Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of multiple languages either by an individual speaker or by a community of speaker(s) is one who can communicate in more than one language be it actively through speaking, writing, singing or passively through listening, reading or perceiving i.e. multilingualism is the using, speaking or writing in several or different languages well.
Reference: Macmillan English Dictionary for Advance Learners.

NIGERIA AS A MULTILINGUAL NATION
Nigeria is a multilingual society with an estimated number of indigenous languages ranging from 450- 505 with Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba as the major languages with about 18 million speakers. The fundamental problem is that none these languages can be accepted conveniently as each the National language. Any attempt to enthrone one of the languages at the expense of the other has proven a failure due to the fact that it appears as distrust which is inherent and regrettably discriminating and domineering on the other languages and this dies in the mine of ethnic bickering.
Nigeria as a country was put together without their consent by Lord Lugard making a reference to the history of Amalgamation of the Northern Protectorate and the Southern Protectorate in 1914. Prior to this, the Berlin Conference had partitioned independent units and Nations into countries to suit their economic goals and pursuits of colonialism.
The portioning brought various people with different languages and cultures together without taking into consideration their differences. As independence came these peoples were made to believe and think as if they were one entity but as time passed cultural differences began to cause a nursing of the idea of a breakup into different entities which soon became cumbersome and encompassing. Although, these cultural and language differences brought with it a rich cultural heritage for the country.
English began to be formally studied in Nigeria in the 19th century and is now used in almost every parastatal such as governments, education, literature, business, commerce, media, and international communication and as a lingual Franca in social interaction among the educated.
Factors that brought about multilingualism in Nigeria can also be seen in the lights of:
 Political annexation
 Marital relations
 Economic transactions
 Cultural associations
 Educational acquisition and
 Religious affiliations

ADVANTAGES OF MULTILINGUALISM
Multilingualism is the natural potential available to every normal human being rather than an unusual exception. The advantage that multilinguals exhibits over monolinguals are not restricted to linguistic knowledge only, but extends outside the area of language (cook) 1999.
A multilingual has a keener awareness (Alamos and Goldin-Meadow 1990, Ewert 2006, 2008) and Sharper perception of language enhanced meta-lingual.
 A multilingual will be better at judging how many words there are in a sentence.
 Learns more rapidly in their own language with a high positive correlation between foreign language study and improved reading scores (Yelland et al 1993)
 Be more efficient communicators in language.
 Develop a markedly better proficiency in sensibility to and understanding of their mother tongue.
 Develop a greater vocabulary size over age.

BENEFITS OF A MULTILINGUAL SOCIETY
Multilingualism in Nigeria is a blessing because of the advantages it affords the speakers.
a. Communication: if a person is multilingual, communication becomes very easy. If the person travels to a country which is not his own, by knowing the spoken language there, the individual is able to communicate and feels no difficulty in travel and other needs. This is the most important benefit of knowing more than two languages.
b. Income Generation Potential: the individual who speaks more than two languages has an edge over others as he is able to earn more because of various job opportunities in different countries. They have additional income generation potential if they work in a set up where the translation of various languages is essential. On the internet these days, there are various opportunities for people who know more than two languages.
c. Recreation: a multilinguist is able to watch programmes in various languages on the television. The individual is always abreast with the current happenings around the world by watching news in another when he finds himself in another country that speaks another language.
d. Jobs: there are various job opportunities for people who know more than two languages. Jobs that include traveling to various countries are always on the lookout for people who know and speak more than two languages. Companies that have multi-national presence will benefit a lot from employing people who are multilingual.
e. Exposure to another culture: rather than thinking there is only one way to everything, multilinguists stay open, open to possibilities. Fabulous, isn’t it? They know and understand that different people do things differently.
f. Building bridges to new relationships: multilinguists have the ability to build bridges to new relationships because they can talk to diverse people, they associate and make friends with different people. For example, they can be the bridge between two people who can’t communicate with each other, they can translate or interpret.
g. Flexible and divergent thinking: research has shown that individuals who grow up speaking several languages think of one thing in different ways. They know there could be more than one word to a concept. So their mind stands more flexible and that often led to the fact that multilinguists do well in school than their monolingual counterparts.
h. Self Identity: a multilinguist sees himself as a language or culture bridge. The self image an individual adopts increases his self confidence and self esteem.
Based on the above highlighted advantages and opportunities posed by the blessing sides of the phenomenon multilingualism, we maintain that its existence favours Nigeria based on the truth that since her independence, “linguistic imperialism” had to be sustained in the interest of the Nation because there has been no indigenous language that could perform the function of English due to mutual suspicion of and ethnic consciousness among virtually all Nigerians. Therefore, multilingualism should be viewed as an asset, an embodiment of the cultural diversity and linguistic enrichment of the country.

DISADVANTAGES OF MULTILINGUALISM
Multilingualism came with its own problems of resource or revenue allocation and also in the sharing of political power. This problem mentioned were part of the causes of the Civil War of 1967 which saw the Eastern part of Nigeria declaring itself a state “THE REPUBLIC OF BIAFRA”. This was because they felt cheated and left out in the nationality of Nigeria; after the civil war, Nigeria was still divided along the ethnic lines with Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba being the major ethnic group with other minorities. Invariably; this has hampered development because the barrage of corruption in Nigeria can somehow be traced to language and ethnicity. Most of the time, employment is not based on merit but on language and ethnicity, which brings about incompetent people for a job.
Inter-personal relationship is most of the time fostered based on language. A Hausa man in the market relates more with someone that speaks the language fluently than someone who does not at all. Language also breeds a sense of trust in an individual towards another. This was why the British were the most successful and peace in the colonial process because they used the people to rule with their indirect rule.
Although they had problems with the Eastern part of Nigeria due to the system of government which was acephalous not because of language.
From all that has been said of can be seen that multilingualism has been more of a curse than a blessing to Nigeria. Maybe when Nigeria graduates into a national state, there will be a change because people will remove their loyalty from their ethnic groups to the state believing it will provide for them. This does not mean that multilingualism is a total curse because there are other multilingualism states in the world that are peaceful and developed. Theirs will stem from their willingness to see beyond their differences into their similarities also they came together willingly and not through colonialism. When this happens in Nigeria, we can see change.
a. Exaggerating weakness: when an individual’s two or more languages are poorly developed, the person can’t cope in any part of the school’s curriculum, multilingualism can be a curse. But then the blame shouldn’t go to the multilinguist but the societal circumstances that create under developed languages in people.
b. Increased parental input: raising a multilingual child can be more of an effort for the parents. The parents need to engineer the child’s multilingual development thoughtfully and creatively allowing the languages to flourish.
c. Cultural Identity: occasionally, children can feel confused about who they really are.

In conclusion, knowing well that multilingualism in Nigeria is simply an amalgamation of different dialects and the standard form of each language as regards each geopolitical area of the nation coupled with the inception of the major European languages- English and French; we maintain that it is as a curse. Reasons to this stand are obvious occasion of divisions among local languages which slows down national progress. Another is that it serves as an aid for inclusion and exclusion, disrupting our national unity. As a blow on the commercial, educational, political and administrational prosperity of the country, it has done no good to national development though while trying to rectify these differences, English language became a saving grace as it became an official language. In the actual sense of the matter, Nigeria has never been a nation. What is a nation? Firmly speaking, a nation is been a given group of people that shares the same language, same culture and are situated in one same geographical location. Could any trace be made to the historical background of the country? Yes, there wouldn’t have been any Nigeria from the outset if each group of people that formed it had been left alone to decide its national fate.

REFERENCES
www.ice-corpora.net/ice/icenige.htm.
International corpus of English. The ICE project, University of Augsburg, Germany, 2009.
www.unilorin.edu.ng/publications/ADEDIMEJI
The unifying Role of English in a Multilingual Nation: “The Case of Nigeria”
Department of Modern European Languages, University of Ilorin.
www.multilingualism.org.retrived 2010/09/16
an abstract from the work (article) of prof Joy Eyisi
www.onlinelibrary.org

2011-04-27T11:22:00.000-07:00

WHAT’S YOUR CHOICE?

Do you resolve to do the right thing as the bible says or as the crowd says? God do not consider the opinion of majority he is concerned about the few who sticks with him. A diligent man called Daniel resolved/ decided/proposed not to defile himself of the king’s table and I tried to picture what a king’s table is like. A king’s table is a place of banquet where assorted delicacies that are pleasurable to the eyes and belly are set and wines of universal 1st class that keeps you merry. There all reasoning is shut down and you see funfair galore. The king’s table of our own generation has led us to our own slaughter. The things we embrace will add to you, multiply you, divide you or subtract you. It depends on what your choices are made off.
 Your friends: friendship is by choice and not by force. Your friends should be chosen under strict criteria because your friends decide how far you can go. If you keep the right companions as friends who can give your life a lift when you are down, be your sight when your vision seem blurred in delicate issues, share the same ideologies, focus on same things, share similar vision and help in the place of prayer. A friend never leaves you the same way you were met because its either you are made sharp or blunt.
 Your desires: what you won’t eat don’t bother smelling because you could be tempted. If you desire God then his will your choice but if you desire the flesh then destruction is your choice. A desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul, where will you rather pitch your tent (pro 13:19), God’s desires for you or your own desires. Your desire’s fulfillment would either give life or death.
 Your words: watch what you say when reacting to actions. Your words will either create or destroy for by word the earth and all in it was made, so what ever you say it’s what you become. Guide your tongue because it’s the reflection of your heart content so watch what creates the mental picture of your heart. Your mouth defiles (Matt 15:10-11)
These little pointers could defile one unconsciously. Daniels companions were men of like passion and vision, his desires were based on the statues of GOD and they changed the thoughts of a great king Nebuchadnezzar. The world around him was changed because he and his companion made similar choices to keep themselves pure. Considering their situation, they were captives in Babylon but they chose to keep the standards of God in a hostile environment. His friends, desires, and choice of words reflected wisdom which paid off for him and his friends before God and men.
What’s your choice? Stand for God or stand in the way of sinners, I will rather say as Moses said, so chose ye this day as you read the choice of life or death but I plead that you chose life.

SEXING

2011-03-29T16:37:00.000-07:00

SEX & YOU
The will of God who sanctifies you is that you abstain from sexual immorality and that each one of us knows how to control his/her own body in holiness and honour not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God. (1thes 4:3-5)
I want to stress that sex is a natural function but that it carries responsibilities to another person. As young people who are being referred to as the sexually active population in our society, we are not matured to handle psychological stress that comes with pre-marital sex despite our maturity physically (body & size). The proposed zone for sex by God is marriage which is honourable unto all. How do we totally abstain from pre-marital sex and its consequences?
 Curiosity with youth seems to be inseparable. If you are curious seek guided advice from the right adults and the internet but don’t dare some practical.
 At a tender age you need a network of good friends because most information you receive, assimilate and later interpret in actions are gotten from our peer groups. The greatest influence upon a youth is one’s peer group (age mates, school mates & street/hood pals).
 Inferiority complex complicates things for we the youths. Don’t desire what someone has because you want to be like him/her. Gals measure their worth by their sex partners & guys by the number of virgins deflowered as a bet. The desire to feel wanted makes reasons for early relationship but there are rules to every game.
 Insecurity is the tendency to feel fearful, anxious, unsafe, apprehension regarding present or future situations or circumstances. Don’t do this to yourself, who says no one will marry a non-sexually experienced person? It’s all a forged lie to lure you to fear, make you anxious because they have made a great mistake & are searching for more people to join their club.
Controlling ourselves in holiness and honour to abstain from all sexual motives is to say as Joseph did (how will I do this great evil and sin against God), don’t go into this flu of boyfriend /girl friend because it’s just an avenue for codling & petting in other to feel a sense of belonging. Propose to have the abstinence syndrome (Abstain till Marriage) with God’s words to convince and admonish you in your decision.
Abstinence doesn’t mean masturbation in other to console oneself about not having the /real thing. Oral sex could kill your sex drive so why don’t you hold up a while longer and table this in you heart (let no guy/gals despise your youth).
A FRIEND LOVETH AT ALL TIMES AND A BROTHER IS BORN IN ADVERSITY. PROV 17:17.

2011-03-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

HELP OUR YOUTH THE TRUTH TO KNOW
Having sang the National Anthem’s 2nd stanza for over 6yrs now and realized in 2009 it was a prayer song in our heart for our beloved country. One striking line is “Help our youth the truth to know” and I pondered what truth? The scripture says the truth will set you free and I say the more of God’s words you know will set you free. I will examine the basis of the truth we need to know Rom 1 vs 18-19 and God’s reactions to them. Ungodliness and unrighteousness are two things God frowns at seriously (sin is a reproach to a nation but righteousness exults her).
The truth to know about our generation’s ungodliness and unrighteousness along side God’s response to them.
SEX: Fornication and idolatry are abominations and scripture says marriage is honorable to all and the bed undefiled. Your body is the temple of the living and you must keep and use for His glory. You are just for a man and not for men.
UNGODLY DRESSING: All your body shape and attributes are not for flaunting. Your Godly appearance means a lot 2Tim 3:5; strength and dignity are her clothing prov 31:25 even God clothed Adam and Eve when they were naked Gen 3:21.
ALCOHOL: The bible says give wine to the perishing prov 31:1-6,woe to him who rise early to strong wine and stay late till evening until he is drunken Isa 5:11, wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise prov 20:1 and above all be drunk but not with wine Isa 29:9. Prov 23:30-35
REBELLION: It incurs the instant wrath of God Heb 3:8-11 and such a person is referred to as an evil man prov 17:11.
DISOBEDIENCE: It incurs the wrath of a short life spam Col3:20. God is ready to punish every move of disobedience 2 Cor 10:6. You have to strife not to be disobedient Heb 4:11. OBEDIENCE saves one from destruction and adds to you Gen 22:18
TATOOS: These are drawings and writings on our body which is the temple of God and He called it an abomination in the temple Eze 8(vs. 10 says: and there, every form of creeping things, and detestable animals and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed on the wall and about). Making of strange marks engrafted in our bodies which is God’s abode is a pollutant.
A note of advice 2Tim 3:4b be not lovers of pleasure but of God pursue righteousness and godliness 1 Tim 6:11b and above all 2 Cor 7:1a “let us cleanse ourselves from every defiling of body and spirit bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God”.

YEMISI GRACE ODEBAMIKE