Ideological Representation of Unity and Peace through Contrast: A Critical Stylistic Analysis of Ambanasom’s Son of the Native Soil

Abstract

Critical Stylistics is interested in uncovering and revealing hidden ideologies in texts and discourses. It analyses power relationships in society representing reality, which is based on the fact that there is a level at which texts organise the world we experience and that this is demonstrable in the words and structures of the texts themselves. Writers have different ways to portray power relations in society and this is exactly what Ambanasom does in Son of the Native Soil. This study examines the following questions; how does Ambanasom represent unity; what discursive choices does Ambanasom use to bring out his ideology and how does the story represent the Ngie society? In Son of the Native Soil, Shadrach A. Ambanasom portrays a power tussle in the Ngie clan contrasting the good and the bad.  He contrasts through rhetorical questions, comparison, discourses, pre-modifiers and proverbs. This analysis assumes that the creation and interpretation of texts is ideological and that each text presents the world in a particular way. It also asserts that in fiction, texts can help expose society’s dominant ideologies and allow readers to see them in operation.