GRAPHOLOGICAL FOREGROUNDING IN CHIMAMANDA ADICHIE'S PURPLE HIBISCUS

Purple Hibiscus captures the complex political and religious struggles occurring in Nigeria. It highlights the

country's history and cultural experiences from her independence times. Nigeria attained her independence in

1960. This was followed by instability and series of coups which caused a great turmoil. The turmoil in the

country resulted in corruption which caused further instability and successive coups. Political unrest, chaos and

violence rage as military coups unfurl subjecting the society to tyranny. This is highlighted in the text under

"leader, Big Oga" which echoes the atmosphere of the time, symbolized by the reign of General Sani Abacha,

who took over Nigeria in 1993. During this time, there were incessant arrests and jails of critics and activists and

foremost intellectuals and educators fled the country to avoid rising autocratic rule, intimidation and deteriorating

social services. It was at this time that a celebrated writer, Ken Saro Wiwa was executed with other human rights

activists and Nigeria was suspended from the commonwealth of Nations. This is the backdrop or context against

which the story of "Ogechi Nwankiti" in the text is crafted. Abacha died in 1998 and was succeeded by General

Abdul Salam Abubakar, who attempted to restore democracy. A former General, Olusegun Obasanjo became the

elected President of Nigeria and was inaugurated in 29th May, 1999.

Adichie also touches on the rich diversity of her people and their traditions, the variety of their religious beliefs

and philosophy. She explores Western versus African cultures by contrasting the legacy of colonization - its

religions, language and customs with traditional cultural values. Devout Africans (traditionalists) who are

unfamiliar with the peculiar religious practices of others (especially |Christians) tend to be seen from a detached,

ironic point of view in Nigeria. The contemporary Nigeria has a variety of religious beliefs - christians, muslims

and practitioners of traditional religion. These are the relevant contextual situations which inform linguistic

patterning in the text.

Textual Analysis

We have already established that, in its broadest sense, graphology refers to the visual medium of language. It

describes the general resources of the written system of language, including punctuation, spelling, typography,

alphabet, paragraph structure, etc. Apart from this, as we have earlier mentioned, it can also be extended to

incorporate any significant pictorial and symbolic devices which supplement the written system. Specifically, the

present study investigates the length of the text, paragraph structure, punctuation, and typography as a result of

their strategic stylistic value as elements of signification, aesthetics and foregrounding in the text.

International Journal of Language and Linguistics ISSN 2374-8850 (Print), 2374-8869 (Online) Vol. 1, No. 2; December 2014

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Length of the Text

In Adichie's text, the consecutive sequence of four parts is three hundred and seven pages. The first part,

"BREAKING GODS: Palm Sunday," and the last part, "A DIFFERENT SILENCE: The Present" are the smallest

parts of the four sections, and both have equal pages of sixteen each. The second part, "SPEAKING WITH OUR

SPIRITS: Before Palm Sunday" is the largest part of the text with two hundred and thirty seven pages; and the

third part, "THE PIECES OF GOD: After Palm Sunday" has thirty eight pages. What immediately attracts

attention in this graphological device is the manner in which Adichie uses key synonymous phrases i.e. "breaking

God's - " and " the pieces of God - " and the antonymous words and concepts: "speaking" and "silence" in the

heading as the backdrop against which actions are delineated in the novel. The obvious fact is that this mode of

graphological patterning depicts the kernel of meaning and the contradiction or conflict that pervades the entire

text, a contradiction that borders on repression, hypocrisy and freedom. The aim of this justaposition of

antonymous lexemes is clearly to foreground the battlefield of social-cultural and socio-political values and

events in the text which is rife with abuse and despair, for as Mullany and Stockwell (2010:46) put it,

"foregrounding can be analysed stylistically as a feature of textual organization".

Paragraph Structure

Adichie's text also overtly uses paragraph structure and development for stylistic effect. The best or most visible

creative use of this device lies in her deformation of standard paragraphing. Adichie, in the opening paragraph of

the text, begins with the indenting of the first two lines; where the indenting of the first line of a paragraph is the

norm. Subsequently, all of her topic sentences begin with the indenting of the first two lines of the paragraph.

This device clearly reflects what has been referred to as a deliberate distortion of language or textual conventions

or codes (see Leech, 1969; Yankson, 1987; Leech and Short, 2007). The following excerpts from the beginning of

the first three chapters of the text confirm this pattern of paragraph structuring:

i. Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja, did not go to the communion and Papa flung his

heavy missal across the room and broke the figurines on the etagere. We had just returned from church. Mama

placed the fresh palm fronds, which were wet with holy water, on the dining table and then went upstairs to

change - .(3)

ii. I was at my study desk when Mama came into my room, my school uniforms piled on the crook of her arm.

She placed them on my bed. She had brought them in from the lines in the backyard, where I had hung them to

dry that morning. Jaja and I washed our school uniforms while Sisi washed the rest of our clothes. We always

soaked tiny sections of fabric in the foamy water first to check if the colors would run, although we knew they

would not - .(19)

iii. In the following weeks, the newspaper we read during family time sounded different, more subdued. The

Standard, too was different; it was more critical, more questioning than it used to be. Even the drive to school

was different. The first week after the coup, Kevin plucked green tree branches every morning and stuck them

to the care lodged above the number plate, so that the demonstrators at Government Square would let us drive

past - .(27)

Another interesting part of this device is the use of upper case for the first few words of the opening sentence of

most of her paragraphs which should normally have been restricted to only the first letter of the opening word.

This is obviously a violation of the graphological convention or practice. One significant stylistic effect of this

technique is that it gives deliberate prominence to those words in the upper case. The analysis of the extract below

will amplify the underlying point:

THE POWER WENT OFF that evening, just before the sun fell. The refrigerator shook and shivered and then fell

silent. I did not notice how loud its non-stop hum was until it stopped. Obiora brought the kerosene lamps out to

the verandah and we sat around them, swatting at the tiny insects that blindly followed the yellow light and

bumped against the glass bulbs (220/221).

Relating the use of upper case in written language to the spoken form, though, never absolute, will project the

speaker (narrator) as loud. The clear point is that Adichie deploys capitalization, what Davy (1969:174) refers to

as " graphetic highlighting", to imbue or invest key aspects of meaning in the text with the appropriate or required

prominence or emphasis. In the passage above, emphasis is then laid on such words with upper case which

decidedly makes them louder and thus, more attention is naturally focused on them than the others in the same

passage.

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It is, therefore, a design by Adichie to emphatically and strategically capture the deteriorating infrastructure in the

country which are recurring experiences and characterize the social fabric in Nigeria. Adichie liberally employs

this device throughout the text. For exemplification, see below three more extracts selected randomly from the

text that depicts that this design:

i. WE LEFT ABBA right after - . The wives of the Umunna took the leftover food, even the cooked rice and

beans that Mama said were spoiled, and they knelt in the backyard dirt to thank Papa and Mama. The gate man

waved with both hands over his head as we drove off - . (103)

ii. THE PHONE RANG EARLY, before any of us had taken a morning bath. My mouth went dry because I was

sure it was about Papa, that something has happened to him. The soldiers had gone to the house; they had shot

him to make sure he would never publish anything again - . (147)

iii. I DID NOT GET a chance to tell Jaja about the printing until the next day, a Saturday, when he came into my

room during study time. He wore thick socks and placed his feet gingerly one after the other, as I did - .(197)

Punctuation

Punctuation marks generally make for organized structure as well as effective thought flow in any piece of written

text, which facilitates meaningful and efficient reading. Our analysis in this section, therefore, demonstrates that

punctuation is also a marked or significant graphological feature in the text, as it helps in foregrounding the

overall or cumulative meaning of the work. In other words, the mode or pattern of punctuation in the text is

meaning-laden in the sense that it is suggestive or reflective of the given content or proposition in specific

contexts. The full stop, for instance, is a technique generally used at the end of a sentence in writing. In the text,

we notice that there is a deliberate investment of this technique to create the background for specific and general

meanings. As a grammatical pause, Adichie employs this technique throughout the text which is significant for

meaning, especially, through the use of declarative sentences and to mark longer pauses. The extract below

illustrates the point:

You have to do something with all these privileges. Because God has given much, he expects much from you. He

expects perfection. I didn't have a father who sent me to the best schools. My father spent his time worshipping

gods of woods and stone. I would be nothing today but for the priests and sisters at the mission. I was a houseboy

for the parish priest for two years. Yes, a houseboy. Nobody dropped me off at school (47).

Used as a grammatical pause, it inevitably slows down the reading pace. The underlying idea of the passage

above is that the road to success is tasking or demanding and compels hardwork and focus if we are to make any

meaning out of life. Thus, the slow process of reading imposed on the passage by the full stops matches the idea

of the passage and foregrounds the meaning of the text. This pattern or punctuation and its effect beautifully

matches form with message. In other words, the text is clearly constructed to relate content to form.

The comma is another punctuation mark that is deployed to foreground stylistic meaning in the text.

Conventionally, it is used for a variety of purposes - separate main clause from subordinate clause; introduce a

direct speech, etc. In the words of Adeyanju(2008:89), a comma "is a graphological device used to separate items

in a list and to create a slight pause in the unit of thought - " Its main function in the text is essentially to show

where Adichie would naturally pause so as to allow her message to be absorbed and also, to separate items in a

list. The extract below illustrates this technique which is a prominent part of Adichie's stylistic choices:

At Ninth Mile, Papa stopped to buy bread and okpa. Hawkers descending on our car, pushing boiled eggs, roasted

cashew nuts, bottled water, bread, okpa, agidi into every window of the car, chanting: "Buy from me, oh, I will

sell well to you." Or "Look at me, I am the one you are looking for". (54)

The critical point is that a grammatical pause like the full-stop, the comma forces the reader to pause nine times in

the extract; and would naturally force down the pace of reading. The theme of the extract is the struggles for

survival. One must go to the roadside, wait, approach car owners, go round and round the car windows, and then

chant in order to make a living. It is a difficult and a slow process; and it is this slow process of eking out a living

that is enacted by the slow pace of reading the text through the use of commas. The critical fact that emerges from

this style is that grammatical pause serves as a technique for foregrounding the meaning of the text.

The question mark is used to suggest that an expression is a question meant to elicit information from the

addressee. The use of the question mark in the text is, apparently, also stylistically significant.

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In other words, Adichie's deployment of question mark in this text has intrinsic stylistic value in the sense that it

is deliberately used to foreground or draw attention to crucial aspects of meaning and to create directions in the

mind of the reader. This extract exemplifies this point: "Sole administrator must go - head of state must go -

Where is running water? Where is light? Where is petrol?" (228). The critical point to note in this context is that

question marks carry with them a rising intonation, and the natural attitude associated with a rise in tone suggests

the semantic feature/ + critical/. The design in the context is, therefore, to reflect the critical social conditions

under corrupt leaders and which the people are forced to protest against. The central concerns in the passage are

serious and the contradictions curious. The question marks are, therefore, a deliberate effort to mean, to

interrogate the system: why the so much lack of basic amenities in Nigeria or any post-colonial African country,

when there is so much resources and potential?

The stylistic technique of quoting conversation is also stylistically foregrounded in Adichie's text. It is mainly

used to know characters by what they say especially in the novel genre which is inherently narrative. This is

clearly in tandem with Campsall's (2008) observation that graphological features of a text determine subtle and

important aspects such as genre and ideology. Adichie's novel is, in fact, replete with this style marker and it is

achieved graphological through the use of quotation marks. The most significant or critical point about the use of

this device is the shortness of most of the quoted speeches of conversations and, in fact, its liberal use in the text

makes it almost a drama piece in format:

" - I talked to Philipa the other day, She said.

"Oh? How is she, how is oyinbo land treating her?"

"She is well"

"And life as a second-class citizen in America?

"Chiaku, your sarcasm is unbecoming".

"But it is true. All my years in Cambridge, I was a monkey who had developed the

ability to reason"

"That is what they tell you. Everyday our doctors go there and end up washing plates

for oyinbo because oyinbo does not think we study medicine right. Our lawyers go and

drive taxis because oyinbo does not trust how we train them in law" (244).

As can be gleaned from the extract above, the fundamental stylistic point here is that, through this device, Achidie

makes her characters express critical opinions that are critical and strategic to our understanding and interpretation

of the text. The short speeches make the points sharp, pungent and penetrating - they make the points to sink in

seamlessly and thus, the reader can artistically relate to a common bitter experience of the blacks i.e. "I was a

monkey who had developed the ability to reason" portrays an existing but sensitive racial phenomenon which

continues to confront the black man in the white man's land.

Typography