Representing the Environmentalism of the Poor in Taniire Ojaide’s The Endless Song

Abstract

Environmentalism in the oil-rich Niger Delta has continued to generate literary responses from scholars and well-meaning Nigerians who feel that with the region’s enormous contribution to the growth and development of Nigeria, the pitiable situation of its polluted environment ought to have been addressed by government. In the Endless songs by Tanure Ojaide, the theme of ecological degradation is explicitly explored to show how it manifests in the region. Using insights from Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the paper through content analysis, demonstrates how poetry through the medium of language has been creatively deployed to portray the level of ecological degradation in the region. The overall analysis reveals that the artistic utilization of language for literary expression has been a viable aspect of linguistics, literary and ecological inquisitions. The paper submits that CDA can help researchers and students become aware of the type of language utilized for addressing environmental problems. This awareness in turn, would help to comprehend, construe and appreciate the propositional and ideological contents of environmental texts.