Abstract
The aim of this study is to investigate and critically appraise E.D.M. Sibiya’s manipulation of the isiZulu language in his novels. Sibiya has contributed greatly to the growth of isiZulu literature. Despite being an award-winning novelist, his works, particularly novels, have not received the amount of attention they deserve as there is relatively less research done on them. Most research on Sibiya’s novels has focused on literary elements such as characterisation and social ills as depicted by themes. There is very little that has been done on evaluating language in his novels. It is for this reason that the study of language is proposed to be prioritised to uncover the essence and quality of Sibiya’s novels.
The study is done through the lenses of linguistic stylistics. This is motivated by the fact that the identified works in the indigenous African languages of South Africa lean more on literary stylistics and less on linguistic stylistics. Since little has been done to distinguish between literary stylistics and linguistic stylistics in these languages, an attempt is made in this discourse to unpack and demystify this. Guided by Ngara’s linguistic proper format and Azuike’s procedure to style, the three levels, namely: Stylo-lexicon features, Stylo-syntactic features, and Stylo-graphological features, are proposed to guide a linguistic stylistic/stylo-linguistic analysis of Sibiya’s novels. These levels will cover lexical choices, syntactic patterns, and punctuation/orthographical aspects. An in-depth investigation is made to ascertain how Sibiya’s lexical choices, syntactic patterns, and punctuation/orthographical aspects contribute to the quality of the author’s works. A scientific study of Sibiya’s novels is offered through linguistic stylistics which leans heavily on descriptive linguistics. Such an approach is interdisciplinary in nature as it blends and harmonises linguistics and literary criticism.
Since Sibiya’s four novels are the primary sources for data collection, this implies that the study is done qualitatively. Information is gathered, collected, and interpreted through textual analysis as a qualitative research technique. The study is divided into eight chapters, with Chapter one serving as introduction and Chapter eight as conclusion. Chapters four, five, six, and seven serve as analysis chapters and while Chapter two covers literature review, Chapter three comments on aspects of theory.