A DISCOURSE-STYLISTIC PERSPECTIVE OF YERIMA’S PARI AND THE SPATES OF GRAND CORRUPTION: AN IMPLICATION FOR POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

Abstract

This study, from a discourse-stylistic perspective, examines Ahmed Yerima’s Pari and the spates of grand corruption in Nigeria.  Through the prism of a Northern Nigerian family thrown into utter despair by the loss of their only daughter due to the Boko Haram insurrection; the study, first, examines how the world of the discourse prioritizes this theme through information structures.  Second, it attempts to unveil the linguistic features used in achieving this. Findings unveil that mood, modality, and transitivity amongst other choices contribute to the entire conceptual construction and interpretative impressions of the discourse. While probing and leading interrogatives are used in the text as structural information to direct readers’ attention to the insurgency and the conspiracy of silence; declarative is employed to categorically expose these phenomena as spates of grand corruption through diverse processes that are informatively and thematically driven. With this, readers’ cognition becomes deepened concerning the complicity of the government in the entire phenomenon.   The study intends to enrich not only readers’ perception of the problems but how the discourse tends to address them.