
































Subtextuality of Narrative in the Faction of Uche Nnyagu's Dear Mother

Michael Uyanne, Lucky Onebunne & Ozioma Ajemba

Abstract

This paper rationalizes the existential naivety of the infantile innocence, which was influenced
by the external social construct of being like thers. The author is unaware of himself, therefore,
he mirrors himself through the lens of his immediate tenor. The narrative structure of Dear
Mother reenacts the events of the affective involvement of the participants and processes,
through the lexical expressions which invoke nostalgic semiotics of the author’s experience. The
conceptualised use of language in the text represents experience in language which was
characterized by lexical consciousness. Language is used here as an object of thought and world-
view/ideology. Ideational metafunction serves as the model used in this paper to extrapolate,
through the textual analysis, the writer’s “undefiled” philosophy installed in his brain, which
continued to expand on a vast scale, until it gave rise to the creation of Dear Mother: which
unconsciously represents the writer autobiographically against his initial and extrinsic intent, that
is, his mother’s biography. It is about encoding experiential meanings that involve the material
world, the experience and value-system. The text- in all -foregrounds the author’s formative
inexperience which is a function of immediate and wider tenor.

Keywords: Language, ideational, metafunction, semiotics, subtextuality

Introduction

Life is lined with a tread of conscious and subsconscious actions which shape events, that is
every action done by human person is influenced by the intellect or fatalism, in which we are the
actors. Our actions and inactions are influenced or as the function of our epistemic experience
regardless of its littleness, but the effect is enormous. This initiates us into the world of reality
which tapers into practical experience. This experience is as a result of the chains of events that
nurture every individual person to be conscious of the socio-psychology of himself and society.
Now, the thought of the individual person, the participant in the real-world situation, should have
matured to the point of expressiveness and conscious experiences of his social cognition.



Linguistic language, that is language spoken or written within a socio-interactional
domain, is only way of representing reality. Because there are other ways, in what I call,
symbolic language represents reality, for instance’ taking a photograph or making a drawing.
These elements represent semiotic images that exist in the thought, in the consciousness and in
the reality of an individual person. These representational images, lurking in the thought,
consciousness or reality, facilitate in the negotiation of meaning which is being informed by the
social forces of the participants. But the thoughts are controlled and limited to the confines of the
visual images; because the photographer takes an image by standing on a particular place, and
thus chooses what to include in that visual image, what to focus on, etc. However, in “linguistic”
language, even though there are building codes to follow an individual person, the
philosophy/worldview and the event/situation, which influence the choices the participant makes
in the language, the participant. But, the participant, that is the language user, is not the lexical
hub of the choice of the language, rather our society which is centrifugal and centripetal
sociocultural force of the social linguistic variables or resources.

Construction of the order

In our present social order, the way we confer in order to present our complex thoughts and ideas
has been evolving to what Wells calls “distinctively human semiotic” (Halliday, 2003, p.69). It is
a specific way of conversing which is being enabled by the process of language. This facilitates
interactions, which influence the process that helps us to construct the microcosms in which we
find ourselves living “our little universes of doing and happening, and the people and things that
are involved therein” (Halliday, 2003, p. 116).

Unconsciously, there is some semiotic activity during this language interaction that
participants interpret of having two macrocosmic poles of orders (social and natural order) which
they are fully part of its beingness. All through human existence and down the history lane, these
reflective and contemplative forms of dialogue have employed dependably on the same resources,
such as, spontaneous, ordinary, everyday and natural spoken language. These are seen, according
to Malinowski, as having some coefficient of weirdness, which is found in the more esoteric
contexts of its use (Malinowski, 1935, p.78).

The entire dialogic construct is a social order which by definition is interactive. That is, at
the micro level, where the individual person is known by talking and also listening to him, and
he responds accordingly, in the same natural language. Similarly, at the macro level, the dialogic
construct is with nature which is also interactive, but in another guise (Prigogine and Stengers,
1985, pp. 41-44). So, “when we want to exchange meanings with physical or biological nature
we have to process information that is coded in very different ways, and that may need to go
through two or three translation before we can apprehend it” (Halliday 2003, pp. 116-117).

Microgenesis of Writers Experience



It is a process-oriented approach to the study of mental phenomena on the structural development
of thought of an individual person. This highlights the development on a brief present-time scale
of a thought, perception, an expression and an object of imagination, which outlines the
existence of immediate experience that engenders this experience (microgenesis) “as dynamic
unfolding and differentiation in which the ‘germ’ of the final experience is already embodied in
the early stages of its development” (Rosenthal, 2012, p. 1). So, he avers the major concerns of
this immediate experience as the focal experience of any object that can be seen as a figure in the
general field of consciousness, which as clothed in a percept, expression, thought and object of
imagination (Rosenthal, 2012, p. 1). In fact, focal experience posits to develop and stabilize
despite its modality and content, by dynamic differentiation and unfolding. This immediate
experience, in microgenetic field, validates a phenomenological and genetic theory of cognition
which emphasises mental action or the acquisition of knowledge through intuition or thought,
perception or experience, and expression or imagination. These cognitive elements are essential
in the process of genetic differentiation and development.

This theory of cognition, which is clothed in mental action of the acquisition of
knowledge, is seen by the participant (the individual person) as first social, then individual. Thus,
the writer of the text is overwhelmed by social forces within his immediate experience. This
influences his decision at the micro level of budding experience that is maturational. Vygotsky,
therefore, states that consciousness and the development of concept are at first seen as inter-
mental phenomena shared among the participants, which later help them to develop their tailor-
made consciousness that evolved into intra-mental phenomena. Moreover, in this objective and
experiential world, so for the participants, language is the supreme symbolic mediating tool for
the development of consciousness. In all, every individual person evolves, and as such, is
endowed with the capacity of learning, a logical learning process which graduates to more
mature participants acquiring new knowledge or skills. This continues to be acquired through
social and interactional activities (Madu, 2017, p. 35).

Ontology of Faction in Narration

Faction is a genre in prose writing which enables the writer to invite the audience or the reader to
assess the “symbolic nature of an otherwise familiar series of events” (Ufot, 121). Similarly,
Soyinka states that, it is a genre which tries to fictionalize events and facts, in the proportion that
determines fact to fiction is utterly dependent on the discretion of the writer (ix).

So, in discourse of faction, the writer is allowed to narrate events he has experienced
which he knows or he is aware of or he is part of. However, he has to fill the gaps if there are
missing links in the story line. The author is also bound to reconstruct the circumstances by
employing those narrative elements he and his audience or reader knows which would help them
imagine what they do not know (Ufot, 121). Bamikunle observes, therefore, that faction is partly
factual but chiefly imaginative and fictive construction or concoction of circumstances that are



prevalent within those established facts that facilitate “logical connections coherent meaning to
otherwise haphazard collection of facts”(86).

Thus, the author from the foregoing has experienced or participated in those events,
which spurred him to writing of the text, therefore, the audience is presented with a feeling of
deja vu. This narrative technique, used by the author in the story line, highlights the factuality of
the factual places and characters. These elements foreground existential repetitive cycles of
errors which are typical to the social factual events, and they are the attributes a prose work has
to be seen as faction. So, a narrative of faction has to be an artful selection of familiar real-life
events “which cohere to exemplify a preponderance of particular thematic concerns” showing a
relationship that exists between the past and the present events. More importantly, the
relationship between major development in the text and functional choices of the language, the
author uses in relating the story at different stages (Ufot, 2007, p. 122).

Stylistics and Faction

Style is pattern recurrence. Therefore, every stylistic pattern needs and seeks the company of
another, that is, functional choices of linguistic pluralism in a context. In order to assert a reliable
and coherent judgement about a style of a text, one needs “more than an isolated, erratic
occurrence of linguistic form” (Osundare, 2003, p. 30), which is the aggregate of frequencies of
linguistic elements in two different forms. Firstly, style represents more than one linguistic item,
for example, a certain word in a text acquires some stylistic significant role viz-a- viz other
words. Secondly, style must not be restricted to the phonological or morphological or lexical or
syntactic observation, rather, it has to be a conglomerate of these observation made at different
levels (Enkvist,1964, p. 28).

Contextualism is a significant factor in arriving at this aggregate, because style is a
product of frequencies of linguistic items in a certain context and thus, with contextual
possibilities (En- kvist, 1964, p. 29). It is necessary therefore in measuring the style of a passage,
one has to compare the frequent linguistic items of other passages or texts that have the same
context in terms of social background, time of composition, genre and so on (Osundare, 2003,
p.31).

Thus, style as a linguistic possibility, influenced by contextual variation or pluralism in a
text, holds that language performs a lot of function in different contexts. As a result, any piece of
language is assumed to represent the function of different functional levels, as Ufot (2007, p.122)
has aptly put that, the writers of these faction texts reflect a choice within the resource of
possible choices, not only in the way the faction writers write but also in what they say. “It is
therefore not only in their way of putting things that style resides. It resides also in their
meanings so that any alteration of manner entails the alteration of matter” (Ufot, 2007, p. 22).

Hawkes (1972, p. 16) vehemently observes that metaphor “is not fanciful embroidery of
facts. It is the way of experiencing the facts”. It, therefore, denies us a literal sense, thereby,



induces us to make sense, that is, we are left “to find interpretation of text beyond the truth-
functional meaning captured by paraphrase” (Leech and Short, 21). Ufot (2007, p. 122)
succinctly states that the identity that exists between style and meaning is firmly established, so,
“The blend of fact and fiction is a choice between choices. It is a style which incorporates matter
and manner”.

(Literary) Pragmatics of Texts/Discourse

It signifies a literary linguistic field that is saddled with the investigation of those peculiar
influences that are associated with writers, which they endeavour to exert on their readers in the
bid to establish a working co-operation by deploying the features of language (Mey, 1999, p. 12).
“Such influences require consideration of the conditions of use of these properties when
addressed to a specific audience, including consumers of literary work (Al-Hindawi & Saffah,
2019, p.395). Mey (1999, p.12) affirms that the pragmatic effects in question require a detailed
exploitation of the entire contextual variables that are responsible for the use of the linguistic
elements involved. In fact, Mey (2006, p.549) specifically states that literary pragmatics is
mainly interested in sole of the participant or the writer in societal production and consumption
of literary texts. Besides, Crystal (2008, p.141) aptly declares that it is interested in applying
pragmatic concepts to the production and reception of literary texts.

Large chunks of work done on, according to Van Dijk (1980, p.5) literary studies are
mainly on the analysis of the literary text rather than on the process of literary communication.
However, a pragmatic description of literature shows that in the context of literary
communication, the production of a literary text is a social action. McMahon (2014, p.234) is of
the view that, the majority of contemporary literary pragmatics attempts to define literature as
having an exceptional, functional and communicative status that equally operates on the
principles which are similar to those found in nonliterary discourses. As a matter of fact, it is
bent in restoring the importance of context in literary linguistics, which considers literary works
as communicative acts.

The perception of an utterance is dependent on the circumstances surrounding of the
utterance that is being uttered, that is, the context. If the utterance is made in isolation, it would
not make sense or may be misinterpreted. In essence, context in a text implies the political,
cultural/ ideological and economic status of a writer, whose social actions and discourse are
captured and described within the context of language of the narrative (Mey, 1999, p. 36).
Similarly, Allot (2010, p.38) affirms that the context of an utterance seeks to represent the source
of information which enables the reader to decode what the writer intends to express. The readers
are not likely to interpret the implicatures of the text, if they do not immerse themselves in the
context of the narrative. As such, it would be difficult for the readers to achieve the optimal
proposition conveyed or the desired illocutionary force/effect.



There are certain pragmatic approaches that highlight the significance of being conscious
of context and literary function as the crux of any interpretation of a literary text or narrative.
These approaches, therefore, try “to restore the significance of context in literary linguistics, and
consider literary works as a sort of communication” (At-Hindawi and Saffah, 2019, p.397).

Narrativity of a Narrative

Narrativity is a collection of textual attributes of a story. Simon-Shoshan (2013, p. 229) states
therefore that all texts exist the in continuum of greater and lesser narrativity, this depends on the
number and the significance of the narrative attributes they bear. Hence, when a text is referred
to as a story, it means that it has the critical, mass of narrativity. He argues further that, most
scholars of narrative have defined narrativity purely in terms of dynamism, to mean the extent in
which a text reflects transition and change, but he added specificity which he refers to as “the
extent to which a text focuses on a particular time or place, a unique event, or individual people
and objects” (Simon-Shoshan, 2013, p. 229). Almost all the texts contain a certain degree of
narrativity, insofar as they are logical or rational to the contextual theme.

To discuss the nature of narrative is to invite reflection on the point of culture and,
perhaps, also on the nature of humanity itself. “So natural is the impulse to narrate, so inevitable
is the form of narrative for any report of the way things really happened, that narrativity would
appear problematical only in a culture in which it was absent-absent or, as in some domains of …
intellectual and artistic culture, programmatically refused” (White, 1980, p. 5). So, being a pan
global fact of culture narrative and narration pose less problems than simple data, thus, Barthes
(1977 p.76) states that “narrative is just there like life itself; international, transhistorical,
transcultural”. Having seen this as less problematical, narrative may be considered as the
possible solution to the problem of general human concern. This concern encompasses the
problem of translating “knowing into ‘telling’, and also the problem of fashioning human
experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human rather than
culture-specific” (White1980, p.5). Though, readers may not be fully able to understand specific
thought structure of other varied cultures, they would have far less difficulty in understanding a
story that originated from another culture, however exotic that culture may seem to them. On that
note, Barthes (1977 p.79) affirms that narrative is translatable without fundamental damage in a
way that a lyric poem or a philosophical discourse is not.

This implies that apart from being one code among many a culture which may be used
“for endowing experience meaning, narrative is a metacode, a human universal on the basis of
which transcultural messages about the nature of shared reality can be transmitted” (White, 1980,
p. 6). The ‘end effect’ of our experience of the world and/or our willingness to relate that
experience in language, and in narrative has “ceaselessly substitutes meaning for the
straightforward copy of the events recounted” (Barthes, 1977 p.80).

Theoretical Foundation



There is semantic stratum of meaning, in Systemic Functional Grammar, which is called
metafunction, and it has three sublevels, which includes ideational metafunction (meaning),
interpersonal metafunction (meaning) and textual metafunction (meaning). It is an approach
developed by Halliday (2003, p. 636) in his linguistic theory, where he presented language as a
social variable in a social context. According to Alaei and Ahangari (2016), the theory that is
behind model is functional rather than formal, so, it considers language as a resource used for
communication, and not as a set of rules. In fact, Systemic Functional Grammar states clearly
that a particular aspect of a certain context defines the meanings that are possible to be
interpreted or expressed.

This paper chooses ideational metafunctional approach for the analysis. Because,
ideational meanings are the meanings about how we represent our experience in language which
therefore construes a model of this experience (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 61).
Ideational meaning is expressed through the transitivity or process type with the choice of
process implicating associated participant roles and configuration (Eggins, 2004, p. 206).
Besides, the pattern of ideational metafunction is realized by the transitivity system (Anggreani,
2007, p.49). Eggins (2004, p.206) asserts that forming the elements of this system are made up of
participant, process and circumstance configuration which represent the real-life experiences:
who is doing what, to whom, when, where, why and how.

Methodology

The paper employs a qualitative research design. Its concern is the textual analysis of the text in
terms of metafunction, through transitivity system/analysis. Moreover, qualitative study is a kind
of interpretative inquiry which affords the researchers the opportunity to interpret what they see,
read, and understand. These interpretations are based on the investigator’s background
knowledge or prior knowledge, context and history. The transitivity system of analysis is three
pronged: participants, processes and circumstances, like said earlier.

Analysis

In text, that is, Dear Mother, was analysed based on the transitivity patterns of the clausal
representations of experience, ideas, message; it also conveys information which expresses
content. It is a structure that has forming elements that include participants, process and
circumstances of transitivity. These clauses in transitivity system represent real-life experiences
such as, who is doing what, to whom, when, where, why and how. The analysis comprises the
process type, the circumstantial elements and the participant roles in literary unities of the text.

Material Processes



Material Processes are about the “doing “and the “happening” or about actions that are usually
concrete, that is, tangible actions. Here, they express the idea that something does something or
something undertakes an action. This may be done to some other entity:

It was a Friday evening. I had visited as usual to spend the weekend with my parents. I
was very fond of then so every weekend, as soon as the last lecturer for my class for the day, I
would take my notebook and rush out of the class straight to the bus stand.

The actor (the writer) is using the verbs (process material) to convey his experience to the reader
what has happened or happening, at the time (circumstance).

As I made to continue flipping the pages of the novel, she continued taking and I could
no longer concentrate. I had told her that I was busy but she didn’t want to her. She accused me
of not helping my mother.

The writer is being rebuked by his grandmother (Mama Nnukwu) for not being helpful to
his mother. The writer is relating an actual event, he experienced from his grandmother. He is
trying to highlight real-world experience, and how he experiences it and whom he experienced it
from.

Here, the intentional or unintentional performance of an animate or inanimate is
externalised into the concrete embodiment of the action verb of happening or doing. The doer of
the action is seen also as the “actor” with the optional “goal”, which is affected by the process
and circumstances that show the verb in terms of condition, place, time etc.

Mental Processes

Participants are always interested in concrete processes of doing. They often talk about what they
feel, think and perceive not what they are doing. So, Halliday (2003, p.118) avers that the
processes which encode the meanings of thinking, feeling or perceiving are mental process.

She took a deep breath. She knows I made a point and she sat battling with her mind on
the best way to shatter my point. “Nnaa, what you said is right but your father wants you to go to
school….

The writer has read the mind of his mother by being conscious of the pervading
circumstances. He was able to decipher the perception of his mother. The mother is the
“phenomenon” who represents the trigger of the action while the perceived intention being
communicated is the “senser”.

... I remembered how I quarrelled with my parents over education and I regretted ever
stressing them. Now, I understood that indeed, education is an eye opener…. I was invited to the
government house to meet with the executive governor of Anambra State, Dr. Chris Nwabueze
Ngige.



Probing further, one can see that actions or doings in a physical or tangible sense are not
the question. The question is about mental responses or reactions from the writer, about thoughts,
perceptions and feelings. There are two obligatory participant roles in the processes which
include, Sensor (always a conscious being) and Phenomenon (may be entities of any kind).

In the mental processes, there is always a participant who is a conscious being. He is the
one that perceives, thinks, wishes or detests. This participant is called “senser”. The entity (or
entities) that the participant operates with in his purview is seen as the “phenomenon”.

Relational Processes

They are processes of description regarding abstract relations. Attributive process assigns a
quality or adjective to a participant called “Carrier”, which is being realized by a noun or a
nominal phrase while Identifying process consists of an Identified/Token and Identifier/Value.
Moreover, Attributive Relational processes classify the entity that belongs to a particular or type
of entity, and Identifying Relational processes/clauses assign definite identity to an entity.

Ifeoma was married and was staying with her husband in Delta state. Ngozi and her
family were based in Cameroon. Sunday was staying with Onyebuchi to learn his trade….
Chinelo was the only person remaining and was staying with our parents.

The verb that realizes the processes of “being” in the relational clauses is verb “to be”
and linking verb. They capture the intensive and circumstantial clauses of the text in the story.

… I had somebody who looks at my face to ask me if I want to go to the university.

… though I had no penchant for Agriculture.

There are few verbs that realize the possessive relational clauses that encode meanings of
ownership and possession between clausal participants.

In this clause, attitudinal adjectives that evoke emotion whether objective or subjective,
positive or negative at the level of adjectives and nouns in interpersonal function show that the
writer’s attitudinal approach to the entities or phenomena in the text. This arouses a certain
image and effect in the narrative and context, such as realization, understanding etc.

Verbal Processes/ Clauses



There are three participant roles which include Sayer, Receiver and Verbiage. The Sayer is
responsible for the verbal process. He is almost always a conscious participant. The Receiver is
the one that the Verbal process is directed to, so, he is the beneficiary of the Verbal message. The
verbiage is nominalised statement of the verbal process, which expresses Verbal behaviour.

He was an avid reader and he enjoyed writing too.

Sayer Proc.Verbal Receiver Verbiage

… I told your mother to come with me

Sayer ProcessVerbal Receiver Verbiage

Both direct and indirect report, verbal process stands in between mental and relational processes.
They help to account for any form of “symbolic exchange of meaning or ideas in human
consciousness with their linguistic representation of Sayer” (Haratya,2011,p. 262), the Receiver
and Verbiage.

Behavioural Processes

Behavioural Processes are between material and mental processes, within the domain of
physiological and psychological behaviours, such as staring, breathing, coughing, dreaming
smiling, etc. the participant roles include, Behaver and Behaviour.

I nodded my head

Behaver process Behavioural Circumstance

I shook my head

Behaver Process Behavioural Circumstance

I was controlled by alcohol

Behaver Process Behavioural Behaviour

Behavioural processes are in part about action, action which was experienced by a conscious
being. They are processes of physiological and psychological behaviour. They have almost only
one participant. Behaviourals express a certain kind of “doing” that does not usually involve
another participant.

Existential Processes

There is only one participant in the process and it is called existent. The process shows that
something exists or ‘happens. They were usually identified by the use of the world “there” which



is neither a participant nor a circumstance. It has no representational meaning or experiential
function. Thus, it is empty or dummy process.

There were book piling on the table before him

Process Existentive Existent Circumstance

There was also a small radio on the table

Process Existential Existent Circumstance

Conclusion

The author taught that he is not writing about his mother, but indeed, he is writing about
himself, his autobiography, but he presented his mother as the metaphor of his real existence.
This makes the story real, though he footnoted some fictional sweetener, which makes the text a
“living” faction. Thus the author in order to convince the reader, he uses maive and simple
language or child who is still under the tutelage of his mother. Therefore, he owes his existence
to the mother and also, the hub of his existential construct. The author sustained this literary form
to foreground the import of a mother in the construction of humanity.

The text saw a metamorphic change of philosophy and thought which is maturational.
The language represents human experience and specificity, showing deployment of aesthetic
idiosyncrasy and peculiarity of the genre of an individual text. As a result, the lexico-grammar of
the text captures the meaning-making resource of a language, through the abstract network of
interrelations of events, web of logic, mood and topic, for its optimal interpretation. The author
was able to interface directly with the ecosocial environment of the space and time. Thus, the
semogenic resource that is immanent in text is grammatical metaphor. Grammatical metaphor is
the linguistic process that reconstrues experience as the participant reaches maturity. This is what
applied in the text and the author; the clauses construe a figure whereby the flux of experience is
purely channeled into three themes: process, the participants in that process, and the
accompanying circumstances.

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