Communicative Strategies in Contemporary Nigerian Drama: A Stylistic Analysis of Ahmed Yerima’s The Lottery Ticket

Abstract

The study is a stylistic analysis of Ahmed Yerima‟s The Lottery Ticket. Like other contemporary Nigerian dramatists, Yerima is engaged in the quest for suitable forms with which the Nigerian experience can be transmitted through drama. We examine the stylistic features in the Play. We mainly hinge on the Communicative Model of stylistic theory for the analysis of four data selected via defined parameters. The analysis reveals that the Play is characterized by authorial use of diverse stylistic and rhetorical devices: cohesive devices, point of view, pidgin and figurative language. Thus, the structure of the play is functional. We rely on the Projection Principle to extend the stylistic features of the play to contemporary Nigerian drama