A Critical Discourse Description of Wole Soyinka's Non Fictional Texts: a Study of the Language of Politics

This book describes Wole Soyinka?s use of language to produce texts that foreground problems of democracy in need of change. Descriptive and interdisciplinary methods were adopted. van Dijk?s and Fairclough?s theory of sociocognition, Mey?s critical pragmatics, and Halliday?s systemic functional grammar provided the theoretical framework for this study. Soyinka?s recent non-fictional texts (e.g. You Must Set Forth At Dawn) were selected for analysis because of their richness in the representation of the writer?s political philosophy. They were content analysed, focusing on the themes of democratisation, political economy and national security. The book will be useful to undergraduate and postgraduate scholars studying critical discourse analysis, semiotics and political discourse.