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.
