A Linguistic Analysis of Selected Excerpts from Two Literary Genres

Abstract: English language is used in different ways and forms and each of these ways results in a variety. Variety differentiation is often intuitively done on the basis of the preponderance of certain lexical items or sets. Paradoxically, expressions rather than lexical items are the basis for identifying an excerpt as literary. This paper focuses on a linguistic delineation of the topography of literary script with reference to excerpts from Zaynab Alkali’s The Stillborn, Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine and Michael Echeruo’s Lullaby. It argues that literary language is eternally fresh on the basis of the emphasis on form achieved through special manipulation of the linguistic code. The paper identifies parallelism, syntactic dislocation, and heavy modification of noun, tense consistency cum flexibility and multiple points of view as the hallmark of creative flexibility in literary texts and consequently concludes that only creative readers can appreciably decipher the entire communicative value of a literary script.