Characterization and Backhanded Language Teaching
in Frank O’Connor’s ‘Guests of the Nation’
’Femi Dunmade, PhD
Department of English
University of Ilorin
Ilorin, Nigeria
ABSTRACT
The relationship between English and English Literature or Literature-in English is symbiotic but is hardly stressed in the teaching of the two disciplines. The scarce approach to teaching the subjects may be responsible for the failure of students to advance the knowledge of the language in the study of literature in the language or recognize the literature as a site for a study of the language. This study addresses this failure by examining Frank O’ Connor’s ‘Guests of the Nation’ as a site for teaching mainly varieties of English. It adopts the theory of character and focuses on characterization in the short fiction to show the varieties of the language employed in it. The study establishes dialect, sociolect and idiolect as the varieties available in the story. It reveals further that two regional varieties of English are depicted in the story; that each character in it is individualized by a language variety; that members of a social group which evolves in the story are identified by at least a particular lexeme. By the presentation of two regional varieties of the English Language, the sense is justified that the war is between two regions and so also is the idea, suggested in the title, that the prisoners of war are captives from another country. It is recommended that teacher should incorporate into the teaching of both English and the literature in it their mutually advantageous association.