Stylo-syntactic Discourse of Proverbs in Tayo Olafioye’s Grandma’s Sun: A Childhood Memoire from Africa
Yusuf O. Suleiman
Department of English Studies
Adekunle Ajasin University
Akungba-Akoko, Nigeria
ABSTRACT
This study underscores stylo-syntactic discourse of proverbs in Tayo Olafioye’s Grandma’s Sun: A Childhood Memoire from Africa. This pattern of discourse is aim to exhume the message underlining the choice of the proverbs in the build-up to express the African socio-cultural experiences. It is a way to probe and describe the nitty-gritty of every particle forming the string of the proverbs’ structure. Grammatical particles in the ten selected proverbs form the tools for the analysis. Asides grouping the string of the proverbs into grammatical structures, using Halliday’s systemic functional approach, efforts are also expended in the extensive description and functionality of the grammatical particles existing in the proverbs. One important discovery made is that the proverbs are in preponderance of rank shifted clauses in the subject position, making and giving unprecedented vigour to the proverbs, as well form the source of the message and a sense of direction to how the proverbs are contextually located in terms of participants. Finally, it is worthy of note that a good stardom has been constructed in discourse pattern by scrutinizing available grammatical particles in proverbs’ structure and construct to race the bar of African culture and traditions.
Keywords: Stylo-syntactic discourse; Proverbs; Socio-cultural; Grammatical structure; Rankshifted clauses; African culture.
