TIVISMS AS SEMANTIC STYLISTIC DEVICES IN THE SELECT NOVELS

Abstract

Literature is a reflection of the culture of a given people, and language is the medium through which such a culture is expressed. The study is concerned with unique expressions which express Tivness. It investigates the effectiveness of semantic devices in the select novels using denotative and connotative meanings. The data for this study is drawn from primary and secondary sources. Primary data include excerpts from Shija’s Whispers of Distant Drums (2005), Tange’s The Legitimate Candidate (1999), Gar’s The Blood of the Ram (2009), Kwaghchimin’s A Star of Hope (2010), Tijah’s Slow Men at Work (2012) and Norya’s The Luminous Flame (2014). The secondary sources are textbooks, journal articles, theses and dictionaries. The data were obtained through reading of the select novels, jotting down proverbs, figures of speech, transliterations, Tiv loanwords, glossaries, translations, code-mixing and code-switching, and grouping them into denotative and connotative meanings. It has been discovered that the meanings in the select novels depend on the understanding of the Tiv language because the select novels are laced with different sheds of meanings to reflect how Tiv people use language.