CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE AND THEMATIC DISCOURSE IN CHIMAMANDA ADICHIE’S PURPLE HIBISCUS

Abstract

Literature remains a valuable mechanism for pursuing and attaining new world orders, change, revolution, innovation, social constructs, identities, and so on. Writers deploy different stylistic devices, including conversational implicature, to drive home their messages to the audience. This study explores thematic concerns and conversational implicature in Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. The novel, Purple Hibiscus, constitutes the primary data source. The secondary data are drawn from the library and the internet. Qualitative tools and techniques are employed for the data analysis. The study is anchored on Halliday’ Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), which describes the functionality of language in discourses, texts and varied contexts with references to grammatical structures and semantic impulses at both semantic and pragmatic contexts of usage. The analysis shows that the novelist uses conversational implicature to portray arching themes of domestic violence, patriarchy, negative parenting, Catholicism and religiosity, culture and political turbulence. The study concludes that the themes of literary texts are encoded, conveyed and revealed using conversational implicature, among other linguistic and literary mechanisms.