INTERTEXTUALITY AND CONTEXT A FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTIC STUDY OF BIYI BANDELE’S THE MAN WHO CAME IN FROM THE BACK OF BEYOND AND BURMA BOY

Project Abstract

This dissertation entitled, Intertextuality and Context A Functional Linguistic Study of Biyi Bandele‟s The Man Who Came In From The Back Of Beyond and Burma Boy conceptualises the levels of intertextual influx of the two novels via multi-leveled layers of context. It buttresses the linguistic review rather than the literary and examines how at least one text depends upon the postures of the other text. The study examines the manner in which two texts of intra-authorial and intra-generic work exhibit certain levels of intertextuality. In order to achieve textual tightness, the work uses a blend of Halliday‟s (2004) Systemic Functional Grammar-SFG through scale and category theory and Halliday and Hasan‟s (1976) Cohesion as the theoretical frame of analysis. It also embodies Firbas (1992) analytical model to stimulate theme/rheme structuration and their possible prominence. Owing to the analytical approach, and using text-linguistics levels of context, the outcome show that both texts possess textual relations. The findings also demonstrate that, two texts written by an author under the realm of a distinct genre-class retain the inclination of text-context-author-language convergence and intertextual relevance. Thus, by text-craft and artful tradition, text is opened to encapsulate citations, presuppositions, rhetoric, discourse and stylistic loads of another text principally of the same artistic entity.

Project Overview

INTRODUCTION1.0 PreambleThis chapter foregrounds the focus of the study by examining the relevant and key variables of the dissertation and how they function in the development and the realization of intertextuality and context of the two texts. It states among other things statement of the problem (how and why the research is designed to address its outlined problem). It also further addresses the research questions, aim and objectives, significance and the scope of the study and the biography of the author of the two texts under study, and how these variables project the actualization of intertextuality and context of the texts.1.1 Background to the StudyThis chapter addresses discussions of text as a process and text as a product. The development of text in this regard involves not only construing semantic/pragmatic relations to the immediate textual, or even situational context that linguistic properties mean, but by construing relations to other texts and situation in which those linguistic properties are used. The research therefore predicates the place of contextuality in textuality and intertextuality as they achieve textual status via functional language use.Context is a phenomenon which determines the contextualization of a text, by varied levels of context: context of situation, context of culture and context of text.Intertextuality as a concept has its background rooted in the Contemporary Literary and Cultural theory, and has its origin in the 20th century linguistics, particularly in the work of Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure (1858-1913). The term textuality was coined by the Bulgarian-French philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva in the 1960s (Kristeva 1986). Literary writings were constructed like a mosaic out of the texts of others. The works of Bandele demonstrate high level of co-occurrences, perhaps, because the texts appear mostly in the realm of historical, psychological and social recollections. Owing to this, Kristeva (1986) posits that majority of writers borrow ideas from other works of either the same or different genre. In fact, when readers read text with reflection to other literary works, all related assumptions, effects and ideas of other texts provide them different meaning and change the technique of interpretation of the original piece. This means that speakers and writers make presuppositions about the textual experiences of the people with whom they interact.The study of linguistic similarities of texts is not only restricted to the study of language, but the study of the theories and methods of Linguistics (Fowler, 1971:38). The crucial point is that linguistic study undertaken, for instance, Halliday is essentially unselected and purposeful. Fowler adds that the total meaning of a text is more than the sum of its formal and referential meanings. Dearing (1974) confirms that the goal of textual analysis is not merely to provide a genealogy or the historical fact of the state of a text, but more importantly to identify the state from which all others have descended or, an insight in the relatedness of the texts in many forms. It is on this premise that the research aims to study Biyi Bandele’s The Man Who Came In From The Back Of Beyond(1991)and Burma Boy(2007) emanates, and how they closely permeate through the mainstream of context and intertextuality.A text as an entity is defined from different spheres of usage. Some intellectuals define it from linguistic view point. For instance, Halliday (1976) sees text as any passage of spoken or written form which forms a unified whole. It is a stretch of linguistic structures which posit meaning in complete or partial and through its texture and textuality. The textuality of text according to Beard (2008) is construed through textual unity (cohesion and cohesiveness). In literary dimension, a text is a state of composition of ideas, process and events through the interplay of literariness of usage. The central task of textual analysis and the form in which the two primary texts will be viewed are via their written form of language, thereby examining not only the narrative episodes of the texts (novels) but the functional elements of language and how they facilitate the realization of intertextual relations. This study confirms the Halliday‟s (1976) definition of text. The texts, hence, will be treated as a whole entity but the analysis should concern only certain linguistic forms.Consequently, the study of the texts is principally on pragmatic analysis; the analysis focuses on viewing language which takes into account not only the formal elements of any text of utterance, but its implicatures, functions and roles. This is essentially to see text as discourse, that is, a text with social, interpersonal and communicative functions, not merely a site where language is organized. Mercer (1988: 81) in support of pragmatic impact in communication adds that the information conveyed by an utterance of a sentence on a particular occasion are made by the speakers‟ social function as a statement, a suggestion, a request, etc., and other factors.Doing Discourse Analysis here certainly involves not doing Syntax and Semantics exclusively but primarily consists of doing Pragmatics (Brown and Yule, 1988 , & Olateju and Oyebode 2014). Halliday insists that without an examination of grammar and language in its wholesome, there is no reason for making any particular classification of languages, unless one uses external psychological or sociological generalization about the uses of language. He finds in the structure of clause three functions: the ideational, expressing content; the interpersonal- maintaining social relations; and the textual- enabling links to be made with situation.