Language and Meaning: A Lexico-semantic Analysis of Helon Habila’s Measuring Time

Abstract

This study examines and explicates how Helon Habila utilizes lexico-semantic patterning in his novel, Measuring Time, and how his choice of words has contributed to both lexical and thematic cohesion in the text. The novelist’s choice of lexical items and its relationship with the artistic visions is a vital parameter in the novel. It is important to state that the ability of the writer to utilize appropriate words in the conveyance of the themes of the text is the hallmark of a good style. This paper explores Habila’s deployment of features subsuming figures of speech, neologisms, idiomatic expressions, functional conversion, among others, and expounds their stylistic functions in the novel.

DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/12-9-04

Publication date:May 31^st 2022