Form Content Synchronization with Special Reference to Beau Grande’s Textuality in Wole Soyinka’s “Telephone Conversation”
Keywords:
Cohesion, Coherence, Intentionality, Acceptability, Informativity, Situationality, IntertextualityAbstract
One significant observation of new criticism is the form of a text subsumes the content, i.e. the content is inseparably realised in the textual structure. Such a realization is achieved in Soyinka’s poem, “Telephone Conversation”. This article substantiates such synchronization by applying Beaugrande’s concept of ‘Textuality’. Such rigorous application of a theoretical structure as textuality, brings out the underlying racial discrimination of the text very effectively.
De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) have defined ‘Textuality’ as a set of ‘theoretical units’ which succeed in making connections wherever communication events occur. They have proposed seven standards of textuality – cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality. These principles are constitutive principles of textual communication.
References
Abodunrin, Femi. Blackness, Culture, Ideology and Discourse. Bayreuth: Eckhard Breitinger, 1996.
Beaugrande, De R. & W. Dressler. Introduction to Text Linguistics. London: Longman. 1983 (1981).
Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
Book, David. African Literature: A Critical Review. London: Longman, 1980.
Krishnaswamy, N. S.K. Verma and M. Nagarajan. Modern Applied Linguistics. Chennai: Macmillan Publishers India Limited, 1992.
Narasimhaiiah, C.D. ed. An Anthology of Commonwealth Poetry. Macmillan. 1990. 149- 150.
Suroor, Hasan. “A Black and Non-white Issue”. The Hindu Magazine. March 23, (2014): 3.
