Lexical-fidelity in Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel and Ramonu Sanusi’s La vie d’un enfant mystérieux

Abstract

The business of understanding of a text or a talk is a serious engagement,  texts of two Nigerian particularly i literary studies. There are different levels and perspectives in which words and expressions could be conceptualized and applied in a given speech act or communication whether spoken or written. Many scholars have worked on Wole Soyinka  and Ramonu Sanusi's literary texts, especially with regard to the contents of their works in expressing African experiences and realities through the ages. However, less attention has been paid to the role of lexical fidelity as an aspect of the two authors' stylistic properties that dignify their literary compositions and make them stand out. This study, therefore, investigates the relationship between language and the social meanings in the literary texts of the two selected writers. As the research methodology, the French explication de texte and the close reading technique are adopted to examine the literary creative writers. Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel and Ramonu Sanusi's  La  vie d'un enfant mysterieux are purposively selected as sources of data for the study. Soyinka writes in English while Sanusi writes in French. The choice of these two writers is informed by their inclination towards linguistic innovations. The study is premised on postcolonial theory that has special interest in the ways African writers play around lexical choices in their literary texts to reflect their own decolonization agenda. The study concludes that for a better readers' response to a particular text, there is a need for the understanding of words and expressions used in a text in relation to social indices such as ethnicity, religion, political orientation, and other shared experiences.