Research article

LANGUAGE IN THE NOVELS OF CHINUA ACHEBE

Rita Josephine Eve, Dr. Poonkodi

Online First: November 21, 2022


Language is always a socially conditioned utterance, a way of speaking or writing that is conditioned not only by individual temperament or intelligence but also by social and cultural institutions. Language can be scrutinized to reveal certain hidden assumptions which often may reside in what is not said as much as what is said in the gaps and silences of the text. It was speech which came first with the written form following in due course. In Africa, the oral culture was predominant and the written form was introduced only with the advent of colonization. Though much of colonial writing is written in English, what marks out the work of the African writer is their use of English language in depiction of the society to which they belong. Their fiction is governed by the habits, customs, norms and manners of their own group of community and so their speech is steeped in a perceptible quaintness that is unique.

Keywords

Language, reading, writing, culture, norms.