Morpho-Lexical innovations and socio-political themes in Joe Ushie’s a Reign of Locusts
This study is based on Joe Ushie’s creative use of the morphological resources of the English Language to realise lexical innovations in his poetry collection A Reign of Locusts (2004). It has been argued that the contact between the English Language and Nigerian indigenous languages is responsibl...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2021
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18442/1/48041-173389-1-PB.pdf http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18442/ https://ejournal.ukm.my/3l/issue/view/1447 |
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| Summary: | This study is based on Joe Ushie’s creative use of the morphological resources of the English Language to realise
lexical innovations in his poetry collection A Reign of Locusts (2004). It has been argued that the contact between
the English Language and Nigerian indigenous languages is responsible for the innovative use of language in
Nigerian literature. However, this paper contends that Nigerian poets in general and Joe Ushie in particular,
manipulates the linguistic resources of morphology to realise lexical innovations. The paper considers the
creative use of compounding, affixation, blends, lexical hyphenation and lexical bracketing as morphological
resources of lexical innovation that are stylistically and thematically motivated. It reveals that Joe Ushie
manipulates existing morphological processes to create novel words. It further shows that Joe Ushie’s lexical
innovative processes are productive and creative and that the innovative lexical items are nonce formations that
have not been integrated into the lexical stock of the English Language. It then suggests that close attention should
be paid to such innovative lexis in creative writings in second and foreign language contexts (non-native) as they
have the implications for increasing the lexical stock of non-native English in particular and Standard English in
general. |
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