qw Advances in Language and Literary Studies ISSN: 2203-4714 Vol. 7 No. 5; October 2016 Australian International Academic Centre, Australia Flourishing Creativity & Literacy Semiotics of Power and Dictatorship in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Later Novels Yémalo, C. AMOUSSOU (Corresponding author) Department of English Studies, Faculty of Arts and Humanities (F.L.A.S.H), University of Abomey-Calavi (UAC), Benin E-mail:
[email protected] Doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.7n.5p.208 Received: 23/06/2016 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.7n.5p.208 Accepted: 30/08/2016 Abstract This paper explores the different uses of symbols to express power and interpersonal relationship in Ngũgĩ’s bulkiest novel Wizard of the Crow (2006), with a few illustrations from Matigari (1987). It draws on the semiotic approach and identifies about a hundred discourse strings in which signs are used to express tenor between characters. In the main, supernatural, faunal and floral symbols are found to be main vehicles of power, though many other such avenues as ‘vocations’, ‘social and gender-related symbols’ and ‘biblical characterisation and numerology’, etc are unexplored here for space constraints. Before the analysis, it is deemed necessary to overview the theoretical background to the study in which relevant concepts have been clarified. It has been concluded that there is no other work in which power is so much expressed through the explored devices as in Wizard of the Crow. Keywords: tenor, symbol, index, proverb, modality metaphor, modaliser/ weakener, modulator/strengthener 1. Introduction It is a known fact that the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o uses animal symbols in character naming in his novels.