POETRY AS A DRESS OF POLITICAL THOUGHT: A COGNITIVE LINGUISTIC EXPLORATION OF TEXTUALITY AND STYLE OF SOME CONTEMPORARY NIGERIAN POLITICAL POETS

Abstract

This paper investigates how style and textuality are integral parts in
ensuring how poetry/songs are products of thought formation and
keys to meaning making and gaining political popularity. The study is
content and qualitative-based through which investigative spectrum
focuses on the modalities and manner in which textuality and
meaning making mechanisms like style, language, mental thoughts
are amalgamated to achieve artistic integrity. The methodology of this
study is straightforward as it uses data form audio documented songs
in CDs and downloads from YouTube. A total number of poems are
selected out of which five are from Rara and the remaining four from
Ningi. In this work, Greenaerts and Cuyckens (2007) linguistic and
social significations are used as analytical models. The investigation
unveils series of textual and stylistic uniqueness of the poems and of
the artists. Finally, the finding shows that Rarara’s songs, as against
Ningi’s PDP, are more of attributing positive qualities to people in
the politics than the party. This altogether probes how people are
more than their party. Rarara also utilises language skilfully and
resourcefully.