Sexist Language and Feminine Portrayal in Abimbola Adelakun’s Under the Brown Rusted Roofs: A Feminist Stylistic Approach

Abstract

This paper investigates the deployment of sexism against women in Abimbola Adelakun’s Under the Brown Rusted Roofs. While the novel has received little attention from critics, its few critical responses have focused on the creative uses of language and the characterisation of female characters in the text. Inquiries about the intersections of language and gender in the text are missing in the literature. This paper fills this gap in the literature by examining how sexism manifests, at the sentential linguistic level of the text, to discriminate against females in talks and during talks. Against the backdrop of feminist stylistics’ approach to the investigation of gender biases at the sentential level, purposively sampled textual materials are subjected to qualitative analysis through the description and interpretation of sexist language in the text. The analysis reveals that proverbs, normalised gendered cultural sayings, comparisons, and abusive expressions are deployed for the portrayal of females as inferior, silenced, and subjugated individuals in the culture, using rhetorical strategies like rhetorical and unpalatable questions and semantic strategies like presupposition, insult, and negative vocatives. This discriminatory representation of females seems to negate Adelakun’s intended goal of inspiring females to consciously stand up for their rights. On that note, the study concludes that a feminist project like Adelakun’s Under the Brown Rusted Roofs, in addition to creating credible images of females, should be deliberate with the use of creative de-gendered language to enable females to possess and exert (linguistic) power when they talk, are talked with, or are talked about.

Keywords: feminist stylistics; sexism; sexist language; cultural novel; third-generation Nigerian writing