Power Conflict between Africans and Colonialists as Depicted in Literary Texts Written by African Novelists

Abstract

This study aims at demonstrating how a close analysis of linguistics features in some African literary texts can contribute to the comprehension of power relations and ideological expressions in discourse as depicted by the African novelists: Chinua Achebe, Tayeb Salih and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The analysis concentrates on the use of pronouns, speech acts, requests, models, metaphors and diverse lexical choices. These linguistic aspects have been chosen as primary tools for the analysis due to the fact that they are closely related to the three types of constraints such as constraint on content or what is said, relations, the social relations people enter into in discourse and subjects or the subject positions people can occupy. The Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has been adopted in response to such problems. It is the main concern of (CDA) to study the minute details of linguistic structures in light of social and historical situations of literary texts, to display to consciousness the beliefs and values which are embedded in the language. The study also adopted the content analysis as a method for collecting data from the narratives; two instruments have been designed, one for colonialism and decolonization processes and the other for the expression of ideology in the works of African novelists mentioned earlier. The findings revealed that 70% of linguistic expressions used by the colonial administrator are in favour of the colonial power while 30% of linguistic expressions used by Obierika are in favour of decolonization process. However, in the second half of encounter, Obierika has used 66% of linguistic expressions, which were in favour of the decolonization process. This clearly signals the shift of power to Obierika groups; it is the power of the African traditional beliefs.