The aesthetic nature of language in southern African drama with reference to plays of Smith Likongwe and others

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the extent to which language and other stylistic devices, through the multi-dimensional Neorealist style, address multiple contemporary trends in five selected Southern African plays. This realism refers us to a cultural situation or reality (meaning) whose complexity and variety can no longer be represented by any single text or mode of writing but only by a set of relations within a growing plurality of cultural styles and modes of writing. This approach embraces varying styles of writing to communicate varying and wider perspectives regarding the current human experience without falling into the parochial trap of objective reality which is typical of 19th-century realism and post-structural realism. Most of the studies on Southern African drama are focused on Athol Fugard covering the apartheid era (the past) and some on Mda Zakes covering post-apartheid events or post-colonial literature about South Africa. In view of this gap, the study focuses on the 21st-century Southern African drama and demonstrates that truth (reality) or meaning is not absolute or fixed but is constructed within the social context through the text and context relationship, as meaning is context-dependent. This is because the material flow or the floating signifier leads to the unstable signified. Since language is an important tool that captures reality, the study, thus, puts its focus on investigating the aesthetic nature of language in Southern African plays to explore the floating nature of diction, neologism, intertextuality, dialogic self, the significance of ordinary language and translanguaging, and identify rhetorical devices and their respective dramatic effects. In a multicultural society, writers have the right to choose any language they are competent in to write, and we do not expect the African aesthetics to remain the same throughout history. The findings indicate that the language employed in the plays is largely everyday register coupled with scanty figures of speech resulting in rhetorical devices, though not all rhetorical devices are expressed in literary language. Intertextuality presented itself through parody, allusion and representation. The assertion that meaning or reality (truth and representations) are mere constructions has demonstrated the postmodernist and modernist pessimistic attitude towards reality or meaning. Furthermore, translanguaging is evident only in Cards, Mzansi Hopes and Burn Mukwerekwere, Burn, but Burn Mukwerekwere, Burn, is bereft of neologism. Finally, the selected plays revealed varying fractions of realities within the Southern African milieu in the 21st century. In terms of implications, policy developers should endeavour to develop policies that promote inclusive communication in public institutions and in the society at large. In the case of researchers, there is a need to conduct further studies on the impact of language on social attitudes towards marginalised groups in the multicultural society of Africa. Finally, there is a need for educators to incorporate critical language awareness into language teaching curriculum to improve students’ effective communication skills and comprehension of language’s role in shaping reality.