A critical stylistic reading of Remi Raji's <i>A Harvest of Laughters</i>

Abstract

The bulk of existing studies on Remi Raji's Harvest of Laughters have appreciated the work from a literary perspective, glossing over the potentiality of the poetry collection for ideological enquiry within the ambit of applied linguistics. This study, therefore, investigates how Remi Raji constructs the key players in the Nigerian society –government officials and the governed. The study adopts Lesley Jeffries' Critical Stylistics with a focus on four of the analytical tools: naming and describing, equating and contrasting, implying and assuming, and representing actions/events/states. Seventeen texts from nineteen poems in the collection, A Harvest of Laughters, were purposively selected for this study. The analysis presents the government as being hostile by making life unbearable for the masses through their destructive nature that could account for the underdevelopment of the Nigerian society. The governed, on the other hand, are constructed as helpless and subject to the whims of the government. Remi Raji represents the leaders with criticism, given the harsh treatment perpetually meted out on the citizenry, and submits that the government does not act responsibly and with integrity; instead, it maltreats and fails its citizens.

Keywords: Remi Raji, Critical stylistics, identities, decadence, Harvest of Laughters