ABSTRACT
The paper examines the similarities of authorial style in the depiction of war in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and Hilary Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies. Using the Systemic Functional Grammar as theoretical model, it investigates the deployment of the register of war in the achievement of linguistic style by both Adichie and Mantel. The theory sees language from a social semiotic perspective, using linguistic choices a language user makes as a measure of deliberate and conscious decisions in the ultimate fulfilment of functions. Going by Halliday (1985: 38) definition of register as a functional variety of language, that is language variability according to use, the authorial deployment of same in the overall attainment of style in the selected texts is investigated. The findings reveal that not only do both authors show similar thematic interests in both novels, but that they also exhibit stylistic patterns that suggest perceived affinities to almost the same literary and linguistic influences.
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