ABSTRACT
Analysis on a discourse level has been used in the analysis of texts,
but this study attempts to carry out a Critical Discourse Analysis of
Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again. The Norman Fairclough
theory has been applied in this approach, paying more attention on the
socio cultural and political issues in the text. The text, is a social
drama which the author has used to expose some societal ills in the
society, gender inequality and power relations in the text.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
1.2 Scope of the study
1.3 Justification
1.4 Methodology
1.5 Data description
1.6 Author’s background
CHAPTER TWO
Discourse
2.1 Discourse analysis
A brief history of CDA
2.3 Definitions of CDA
2.4 Approaches to CDA
CHAPTER THREE
3.0 Introduction
3.1 Data analysis
CHAPTER FOUR
4.0 Summary
4.1 Findings
4.2 Conclusion
4.3 Recommendations
Bibliography
CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.0 INTRODUCTION
”Discourse” refers to expressing oneself using words Critical
Discourse Analysis (CDA) is concerned with studying and analyzing
written texts and spoken words to reveal the discursive sources of
power, dominance, inequality and bias and how this sources are
initiated, maintained, reproduced and transformed within specific
social, economic, political and historical contexts. CDA along with
other related disciplines attempts to reveal hidden meanings i.e. the
ideological loads of the language and the exercise of power. CDA is a
contemporary approach to the study of language and discourses in social
institutions. It focuses on how social relations, identity, knowledge
and power are constructed through written and spoken texts in
communities, schools and classrooms.
CDA aims to make its users aware of and able to describe and
deconstruct vectors and effects in texts and semiotic materials
generally which might otherwise remain to wield power uncritiqued. In
there respects, CDA may be a kind of wake up cal, or consciousness,
rising about the coercive or anti-demo criticizing effects of the
discourses we live by. Critical discourse analysts take explicit
position and thus want to understand, expose and ultimately resist
social inequality. In other words, CDA may be seen as a reaction against
the dominant formal (social or uncritical most times) paradigms of the
1960’s and 1970’s.
This project focuses on an attempt to carry out a Critical Discourse
Analysis of Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband has Gone Mad Again. This chapter
therefore focuses on the purpose of study, scope of the study,
justification, methodology, data description and author’s background.
1.1 PURPOSE OF STUDY
The purpose of this project is to critically analyze Our Husband has
Gone Mad Again by Ola Rotimi using Critical Discourse Analysis. Being
that the analysis of a play is rarely done, the researcher is not aware
of any previous attempt to do CDA of the text Our Husband has Gone Mad
Again.
1.2 Scope of the study
This project will analyze Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad
Again using Critical Discourse Analysis. It will analyze selected
conversations and utterances in the text. There are a lot of CDA
elements but only some of them will be selected for the analysis of the
text. The analysis will entail how power relations are decoded from the
text that links to the society. Findings and conclusions will bring a
temporary end to this research work.
1.3 JUSTIFICATION
In the best knowledge of the researcher as a theoretical construct
has not been used in analyzing Our Husband has Gone Mad Again by Ola
Rotimi. Thus, the study is justifiable as it seeks to investigate the
sociopolitical and cultural issues that are inherent in the text. It is
also believed that this study will be an additional work in the
scholarship of the study of CDA, especially at the undergraduate level.
1.4 METHODOLOGY
This project is basically a Critical Discourse Analysis or Ola
Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again. Some selected conversations and
utterances will be selected from the text for analysis.
Norman Fairclough’s theory of CDA has been chosen for the analysis of
this research work, some elements have been selected from the theory
including the political and sociocultural issues which occur in the text
and leads to the society. The textual analysis sociocultural analysis
and the political issues of this text will be analyzed.
1.5 DATA DESCRIPTION
The play, Our Husband has Gone Mad Again, is a political satire. It
shows the follies and fables of the entire political system in Africa
and Nigeria in particular, in a bid to correct some of its anomalies. It
lampoons the protagonist Major Rahman Teslim Lejoka-Brown a former
military officer who takes to politics with the motif that looks more of
vanity patriotism. Ola Rotimi takes a comic swipe at the ideological
misfits and opportunist who strut the ever accommodating political
landscape of the continent Africa.
1.6 AUTHOR’S BACKGROUND
Olawale Gladstone Emmanuel Rotimi, best known as Ola Rotimi was born
in Sapele, former Bendel state of Nigeria on 13thApril, 1938, to an Ijaw
mother and Yoruba father, so cultural diversity was a recurring theme
in his work. He was a playwright, stage director, producer, actor,
critic, scholar and a teacher. In his early age, he was exposed to a
traditional Nigeria heritage of arts. He was educated at Methodist Boys
High School in Lagos from 1952 to 1957. He went to Boston University for
a bachelor’s degree in theatre arts where he studied play writing and
directing. He later went to Yale University where he had masters in the
arts after three years and retired to Nigeria in 1966. While in America,
he got married to a French Canadian lady, Hazel a renowned artist,
actress, singer and pianist. In Nigeria, Ola Rotimi took a job at the
University of Ife, where he was a research fellow from 1966 to 1969 at
the institute of African studies. He later became the head of creative
arts and director at the University of Port Harcourt.
The dramatic works of Ola Rotimi are known throughout Africa and have
made him one of the most significant playwrights on that continent.
While he was at Yale University on a Rockefeller fellowship, his
socio-political comedy Our Husband has Gone Mad Again was chosen as
Yale’s student play of the year in 1966. Ola Rotimi examines Nigerian’s
history and ethnic traditions in his works. Some of his published works
are: Introduction to Nigerian Literature, The Gods Are not to
Blame(London: Oxford University Press 1971), Kurunmi (Ibadan: University
press Limited 1971), Our Husband has Mad Again (London: Oxford
University press 1977), Ovourumwen Nogbaisi (Benin: London: Ethiopian
and Oxford University press 1974), If : A Tragedy of the Ruled (Ibadan:
Heinemann 1983). He was in Nigeria until his Nigeria until his death in
2001.
Ola Rotimi is sure to be remembered as a model in the literary genre
whose views have shaped the conduct of the theater and whose plays have
demonstrated the power of drama to shape the thinking of the society and
attempted to solve some of the problems encountered in everyday living.