THEMATISATION IN OBU UDEOZO’S POETRY

THEMATISATION IN OBU UDEOZO’S POETRY

ABSTRACT

This study, which is in five chapters, sought to determine the marked thematisation  strategies in Obu Udeozo’s poetry. The background to the study examined the meaning and nature of poetry, the language question in African creative writing generally and in poetry in particular. Four research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study. The Hallidayan  1970 theory of thematisation, text and corpus linguistics principles provided the theoretical design for the study. The poems in the anthologies published by Obu Udeozo were periodized to determine their time, thematic variations, as well as the regularity of frequency in the use of thematisation strategies.  Twelve periodised poems were purposively selected and studied. A researcher-made checklist  (RMC) was used to identify the dominant thematisation strategies (DTS) in the poems studied. The data for the study were analysed using inferential statistics, which gave the mean frequencies and the percentages of the thematisation strategies in the study samples. The three null hypotheses used for the study were tested using chi-square test of homogeneity at p-value of 0.05 significance. The analysis of  the data led the study to the following findings: (1) There are marked structures of thematisation in the study samples. (2)Thematisation strategies significantly vary according to the subject matter of the poems. (3)The use of the thematisation strategies help significantly in the realization of the themes of the poems. To finally authenticate and corroborate our findings from the statistical analysis, the sample poems (corpora) were subjected to textual analysis. This analysis confirmed the earlier findings.  These results gave the researcher cause to conclude that the employment of thematisation strategies also greatly enhanced the aesthetics of the poems.

THEMATISATION IN OBU UDEOZO’S POETRY

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