Implicatures of Domestic Discourse in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s PH and HYS

Abstract

Scholarly studies on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s works have largely concentrated on characterization, thematisation, stylistic, lexico-semantic, discoursal and pragmatic features of her texts. While the pragmatic studies of the texts have examined explicit meaning in them, very little attention has been paid to the contextual examination of implicit contents of her thematic foci. This study, therefore, is a pragmatic investigation of implicatures of domestic discourse in Adichie’s novels, aimed at identifying the implicatural dimensions that emerge in the discourse in the novels and determining how they facilitate access to Adichie’s thematic concerns. The Gricean Pragmatic theory, which accounts for context-driven meanings, served as the theoretical framework for the study. The two novels of Adichie, Purple Hibiscus (PH) and Half of a Yellow Sun (HYS), were selected and all the domestic issues-motivated conversations in the novels, determined by transactional boundaries, constituted the data for the study. These were analysed using insights from Gricean theoretical notion of implicature. The result indicates that implicatures display two dimensions in DD in the texts, namely, figurative expression with additional meaning and non-figurative expressions with additional meaning. Implicatures in DD in PH relate to the themes of: subjugation, largely communicated through both figurative and non-figurative expressions flouting the maxims of manner and quantity; resistance against domestic violence, communicated through figurative expressions alone, with the maxim of manner being flouted; and self-centredness, communicated strictly through non-figurative expressions, which flout the maxim of quantity. Implicatures of DD in HYS, on the other hand, thematise love, corruption and inhumanity, which are all communicated through figurative expressions, flouting the manner maxim. Tribalism is also thematised, using non-figurative expressions, with the quantity maxim being flouted. The interaction between DD and implicit meaning in Adichie’s novels facilitates access to a context-sensitive understanding of domestic issues in the texts, thereby revealing Adichie’s utilisations of pragmatic tools in espousing the domestic experiences of Nigerians and by extension, Africans, in the fictional realities she has refracted in the novel.

Key words: Adichie, domestic discourse, implicit meaning, thematic concern, novels