Lexical Indices of Authorial Gender Ideology in Sefi Atta's Everything Good Will Come

Introduction The notion of authorial gender ideology within literary discourse has perhaps been informed by the assumption that at virtually every point at which language is used it carries with it the loci of experiences of those who use it. It is an already established design that humanity has a firsthand possession of language--language in this sense is relegated to the view that it is a privileged medium through which people make sense of things (Hall, 1997). Therefore, all that an individual says, does and conceives, which consequently characterise his or her writing, are necessarily by-products of the interaction of his or her mental processing of social activities that occur around him or her on a regular basis, and the already constructed and established ideals and opinions towards his or her existence and life experiences. And so, literature depends primarily on language; it is language put in action or practice. This is connected to the fact that language is a recipe for the process of living. From the early 1980s to date, the issue of gender consciousness (female consciousness of their equality with their male counterparts and how their male counterparts respond to such agitation), has continued to interest literary discourse analysts of linguistic persuasion (Acholonu, 1995). This implies that the role of language in displaying gender and power relations has been given significant attention by linguistic scholars. Kendall and Tannen (2001) for instance, observe that early language and gender research focus on (1) documenting empirical differences between women's and men's speeches, especially in cross-sex interaction; (2) describing women's speech in particular; and (3) identifying the role of language in creating and maintaining social inequality between women and men. Various studies on the cultural influences on gender, language and society investigate gender differences as communication, gender related patterns of talk, the 'difference' and 'dominance' debates, interaction between gender and other social identities and categories such as ethnicity, social class and sexuality (Lakoff 1975; Coates, 1986). These researchers seek to describe the linguistic means by which men dominate women in interaction. West, Lazar, and Kramarae (1997) use dominance approach in constructing gender asymmetries within specific socio-historical contexts just as Maltz and Borker (1982) develop lists of what they describe as men's and women's features of language. On the other hand, some studies have established that sex or gender-based binary opposition cannot be rapidly dismissed (Cameron 1998). By implication, most early post-colonial writings are ascribed masculine interpretations. There are also researchers who only look at women's issue in some fictions, for instance, Ogunleye (2008) uses Caryl Phillips novels in projecting such issues while Jegede (2008) counters the misrepresentation of women in fiction, using The Beggars' Strike and The Triumph of the Water Lily. Oha's (1996) is a study of language and gender conflict in Buchi Emecheta's Second Class Citizen and Fashina (2009) is a new reconstruction of gender meanings on Gabriel Okara's post-colonial African fiction, The Voice. The paper examines the subject and theory of bi-gender meanings in an African male writer's novel, using Okara's The Voice to posit a radically balanced gender ideology anchored on co-sexual liberation. Most of these investigations, except for Oha (1996), are steeped in literary analysis. The foregoing seems to suggest that symbolic studies have ascertained the intricate relationship between power and gender, but an analysis that shows how lexical items pick out the ideological commitment of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa inaugural winner Sefi Atta in Everything Good Will Come seems to be lacking, thus this study intends to fill that gap. Language, Culture and Gender Ideology Language as a form of communication is also the "bearer of the matrix of privilege and domination" (Hussein 2005: 60). …