Project Abstract

Abstract
Femi Osofisan's play "Midnight Hotel" is a complex and multi-layered work that delves into various societal issues through its discourse features. This research project aims to investigate the discourse features in Osofisan's "Midnight Hotel" to understand how they contribute to the overall themes and messages of the play. The study will employ a qualitative research approach, focusing on textual analysis to identify and analyze the discourse features present in the play. The research will explore the use of language, dialogue, and narrative structure in "Midnight Hotel" to uncover how these elements shape the characters, plot development, and underlying social commentary. By closely examining the discourse features, this study seeks to reveal the ways in which Osofisan utilizes language and communication to convey his critique of societal norms and values. Furthermore, the project will also investigate the role of power dynamics, representation, and symbolism in the discourse of "Midnight Hotel." Through a close reading of the text, the research will analyze how power relations are constructed and negotiated through language and dialogue, shedding light on the power struggles and conflicts within the play. Moreover, this study will examine the representation of gender, class, and politics in "Midnight Hotel" to understand how these social constructs are reflected in the discourse features of the play. By analyzing the language and interactions of the characters, the research aims to uncover Osofisan's commentary on the intersections of power, identity, and social hierarchies. In addition, the research will explore the use of symbolism and metaphor in the discourse of "Midnight Hotel" to elucidate the underlying themes and messages of the play. By analyzing the symbolic significance of language and imagery, this study aims to reveal the deeper layers of meaning embedded in Osofisan's text. Overall, this research project on the discourse features in Femi Osofisan's "Midnight Hotel" aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of how language, dialogue, and narrative structure are used to convey social critique and commentary in the play. Through a detailed examination of these discourse features, this study seeks to deepen our understanding of Osofisan's work and its relevance to contemporary societal issues.

Project Overview

 INTRODUCTION

Language is the only unique endowment from God to humans, which makes us totally different from other creatures. Though, these other creatures have a language, yet they do not communicate exactly the same way as humans do.

Discourse, an aspect of language, to the discourse analysts, means actual instances of communicative action, using language. Discourse is not absolutely focused on language as an abstract system. It is seen as linguistic communication involving transaction between a speaker and hearer in an interpersonal activity in which its form is determined by its social purpose.

Discourse can be in the form of conversation, it may also be in written or spoken form. Discourse for instance, deals with spoken language, which occurs naturally, such as interviews, conversations, speeches and commentaries. Examples of written discourse include essays, chapters in a book, road signs and notices, etc. Discourse analysis on the other hand is a systematic examination of discourse focusing on the constituent units and structures of sentences of specific texts that is, grammatical relations such as subject-verb-object, up to the level of text.

Conversation, another type of discourse, as has been mentioned in this section is an example of discourse. Conversation generally involves an exchange between two or more people in which each participant may produce more than one utterance and each contribution builds upon previous contributions either directly or indirectly.

Dramatic texts are made up of conversations, more technically referred to as dialogues. This research will study some of the conversations in Midnight Hotel by Femi Osofisan to show its relevance to culture, and religion. In achieving this, discourse tools like role-sharing, adjacency pairs, discourseA markers, presupposition, implicature and most importantly, context will be used to achieve a coherent discourse analysis of the dramatic text.

1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

This research primarily aims to investigate the discourseA features in Femi Osofisan’s Midnight Hotel. Its objectives are:

To give a clear picture of how discourse analyses can be used in the interpretation of texts.
To show that conversations need to conform to the context of the interaction.
To bring to the awareness of the keen observer, the pattern of conversations.
To give a sound knowledge of such techniques on which effective conversation can be built.

1.3 JUSTIFICATION

To the best knowledge of the researcher Discourse Analysis as a theoretical construct has not been used in analyzing Midnight Hotel by Femi Osofisan. The researcher came across only two researches carried out on the proposed play. They are “Satire as a Social Art

The Comparative Study of Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again and Osofisan’s Midnight Hotel” Obuh, S. (2007) and “The Moral, Social, and Political Decadence in the Nigerian Society: A Case Study of Femi Osofisan’s Midnight Hotel” (Rufus, G. (2013). Neither of these two deals with the specific focus of this research work. This study is therefore justifiable as it seeks to investigate the social, political, cultural issues that are inherent in the text. It is also believed that the study will be an additional work in the study of Discourse Analysis, especially at the undergraduate level.

1.4 SCOPE AND DELIMITATION OF STUDY

This research is centered with analysing the discourse features in Femi Osofisan’s Midnight Hotel. The analysis will be limited to the Elements of Discourse Analysis such as discourseA topic, participants, turn-taking, adjacency pairs, discourse interruption, and role-sharing. There are several approaches to discourseA analysis but the researcher will employ the use of some Pragmatic concepts of DiscourseA Analysis such as Context (linguistic, socio-cultural, physical, psychological), presupposition, inference, implicature.

1.5 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This study is a discourseA analysis of Midnight Hotel by Femi Osofisan; it belongs to the genre of drama. The text has a total of 331 exchanges. A random sampling was conducted and every 22nd exchange was chosen, starting from the 2nd exchange to the 24th, and it went on till the 331st exchange. This makes a total of fifteen (15) exchanges. This selection is appropriate as it is unbiased, and it is considered effective for the purpose of accessibility, thematic coverage, and for comprehensive data analysis.

The data analysis will be presented in an exchange structure format. An analysis will be carried out on each of the fifteen (15) data to allow for easy readability and comprehension.