A Critical Discourse Analysis of Narrative Processes in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Narrative processes within the African context as encapsulated in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (henceforth TFA) are considered as processes through which meanings are conveyed in a discourse. This study sets out to investigate aspects of narrative processes through a linguistic network in TFA by contending that those processes can be worked out within the semantic, referential, ideational, and contextual concepts. Shades of meanings, especially from the perspectives of African narrations, are addressed and situated in TFA. This is because narrative processes play significant roles in clarifying, exemplifying, underscoring and influencing communication and thus are easily situated within the theoretical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA), which focuses on power and ideological projections. It is relevant in its socio-political concern to reveal inequalities of power, while its standard approach to textual analysis is interested in the details of texts such as the socio-political and cultural functions of discourse capable of determining other layers of meaning.CDA therefore is a veritable linguistic tool for studying texts such as Achebe’s TFA, to reveal the inequalities expressed in the narrative processes as deployed in the novel. Through the application of the Wodak’s Discourse Historical Approach to the study of CDA (DHA-CDA), the study reveals that the stories imbedded in TFA assist in retelling the African story from a historical cum linguistic view point. The study also substantiates our initial assumption that narrative processes within the African context as found in Achebe’s TFA are considered as processes through which meanings are conveyed in a discourse. The study also investigates aspects of narrative processes through a linguistic network and contends that shades of meanings, especially from the perspectives of African narrations, are addressed and situated in literary texts by using Achebe, TFAas a paradigm.

Keywords: CDA Narrative Processes Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart

Author

• Matthew Abua Ebim, PhD
  Dept. of English & Literary Studies,
  Faculty of Arts,
  University of Calabar, Nigeria.
  Email: meabua@yahoo.com
  Tel: +234-803-888-1284