A Semio-Stylitics Analysis of Foregrounded Graphological Elements In Afejuku’s A Spring of Sweet and Yesufu’s Visions and Recollections

Abstract

The author focuses on the grapho-semiotic features of Afejuku’s A Spring of Sweet and Yesufu’s Visions and Recollections. Using Peirce’s triads of signhood, as further explained by Short and Auxier and Halliday’s concept of foregrounding, the paper identifies the significant icons, indexes and symbols, explains the stylistically significant versification features in the two collections and establishes how they dovetail with the collections’ thematic concerns. The analysis is stylistic and semiotic in orientation, adopting the qualitative method of textual analyses. Accordingly, the two collections are studied and relevant features identified, analysed and related to the subject matters and themes of the collections. The analysis reveals that Afejuku’s A Spring of Sweet, more than Yesufu’s Visions and Recollections, deploys iconic and symbolic emblems and pictograms to illustrate some sections and themes, while both collections
copiously use varied patterns of lineation, punctuation and emphatic markers to foreground the themes of love, death, nostalgia and patriotism.