Choose two passages from Sozaboy. Analyse the language of the passages, pointing out features of the different varieties represented in the text, and discuss the ways in which the language reflects the ideas being explored.
In the introduction to his novel Sozaboy the Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa explains that it is written in what he calls rotten English, 'a mixture of Nigerian pidgin English, broken English and occasional flashes of good, even idiomatic English.' He claims that this unruly mixture of styles reflects the political disorder portrayed in the novel. The passages this essay will focus on are concerned with the protagonist's time at the army training camp, when he passes from being Mene, an Ogoni civilian, to Sozaboy, a soldier in the army of one of Nigeria's major political factions. They will show the relationship between power and standard language and how Sozaboy can be manipulated because of his illiteracy.
The first of the selected passages is at the start of 'Lomber Nine' and concerns the new soldiers being taught the marching drill. Here the reader must struggle to comprehend not only the unfamiliar pidgin and the different varieties of English but also the military jargon; he or she learns it along with the recruits. The difference is that the book contains a glossary, so it is easy to find out that 'Ajuwaya' means 'As you were,' and even a minimal grasp of military instruction conveys that this is an order to stand at ease. Sozaboy and his comrades have no such medium of interpretation and for them the orders are a more or less arbitrary string of sounds. They have no intelligible meaning in themselves but have actions assigned to them which the soldiers learn by imitation; so to them 'Quashun!' does not mean 'Squad stand to attention' but they have learnt nonetheless that the correct response is that 'all of us will move our right leg and stamp it on the ground.' The fact that Sozaboy copies the other recruits and does not understand why he is doing what he is doing is a reflection of his overall attitude to the war: he does not seem to know or care what the fighting is about or which side he has joined.
The fact that the phonology of the orders is unclear to the soldiers is shown by their adoption of one of them as a nickname for the 'san mazor.' They mishear 'proper' as 'papa' and since this is a word they know they reapply it to what seems to them to be a more appropriate object: the man who directs and cares for them while they are in their khaki uniforms, their 'Tan Papa.'
Sozaboy's quasi-phonetic representation of the orders is evocative of their delivery. The stereotypical sergeant major shouts them in a clipped and stylised manner, which would make it hard for his listeners to make out the individual sounds clearly. Tan Papa, since he speaks to the soldiers in pidgin, is also likely to have a Nigerian accent which, while it should present no comprehension barrier to the local soldiers, would obscure the words of the commands still further. In practice this is irrelevant: the speech act is successful and the troops respond as desired. Indeed, there is no way to tell if the sergeant major himself understands the exact nature of his commands; possibly he learnt them in this non-standard form from his own superior officers. For the reader, however, they are marked because their meaning cannot be inferred from the context so he or she must resort to the glossary; this creates a sense that the phrases are 'foreign' and so the discovery that they are in fact non-standard English results in surprise and perhaps irritation. From then on the orders are classified in the reader's mind as jargon and come to symbolise Sozaboy's institutionalisation: later in the novel he is captured and goes to see the enemy's captain.
So as soon as I got to the soza captain office, he just shouted 'Attention!' As they have teach us before for camp in Pitawka, I just stand straight with my hands down like stick. So the soza captain say 'Yes, you are a soza all right.'
The typographical representation of the orders - italicised and in speech marks - also sets them apart. The onomatopoeic word 'gbram,' which imitates the sound of a troop all standing to attention at once, is typographically indistinguishable from the commands, so the reader may well go to the glossary for a translation and then have to reread the sentence in which it appears before any sense can be made of it.
Tan Papa's grasp of standard English may be questionable, but this is in no way a criticism. Sozaboy is an Ogoni, but this is a relatively small group within Nigeria and no doubt there are members of other tribes in the company of recruits; the sergeant major's use of Nigerian pidgin allows him to communicate effectively with the range of ethnic groups. This internal communication is a common second function of pidgins, which arise on contact between European colonisers and indigenous peoples. A contrast is provided in the second passage where the Chief Commander General comes to inspect the soldiers. His speech is intended to be an inspiration to them, but because it is in standard English it only serves to confuse them: 'big big words that I cannot understand.' In fact, Sozaboy's thoughts begin to wander to Dukana and Agnes so that when the other soldiers shout 'Hooray' at the end of the speech he is caught by surprise. His inability to interpret standard English is shown by his mistake with the General's phrase 'seasoned soldiers' which he transcribes as 'season soldiers'. He is also in awe of the standard variety which he associated with a luxurious lifestyle and it is significant that he describes it with reduplicated adjectives, a stereotypical feature of pidgins: 'big big words' and 'fine fine grammar.'
Tan Papa, who ordinarily commands respect from the novices, seems to lose his authority on the arrival of the General:
Even Tan Papa was marching too. Power pass power. Now Tan Papa no be important man again... By this time Tan Papa is like ourselves - very small man at all. He cannot talk at all.
The sergeant major's silence may be simply due to breathlessness, but it is symbolic of the disempowerment of non-standard speakers. This is particularly so in the light of previous information about Tan Papa:
Others say that he was a soza captain before but they removed the button from his shoulder because he fight and he cannot defend himself because of bad English that he will always be speaking.
Because he is inarticulate by standard-speakers' terms he has to resort to physical means to express his opinions and then cannot explain himself satisfactorily; so despite his skills as a teacher and the obvious respect he elicits from his charges Tan Papa is barred from ascending through the ranks because of his use of pidgin. By way of a contrast, the 'proper book man' Bullet, who has a grasp of standard English, is universally hailed as officer material: 'Every porson is saying that he should be soza captain not just soza.'
'Soza' is a key word in the text, in fact part of the title of the novel, and it seems to be stigmatised as non-standard or 'broken English.' One of the tendencies of pidgins is to simplify the phonology systems of the source languages; in this case the rare affricate /dZ/ of 'soldier' is replaced by the more common fricative /z/. However, this negative association is reduced if one considers the other military words in Sozaboy and the use of slang in all institutional situations. Most militaries have some form of jargon to ease and abbreviate their communication, so the Nigerian recruits' use of 'san mazor', 'sarzent' and 'Tan Papa' is not so much a mark of their non-standard language as of their specialised occupation.
Nigerian pidgin English is an extended pidgin, but Saro-Wiwa's text reaches even further beyond the normal pidgin range because of his addition of elements of standard English. This is necessary if the book is to reach an international audience, since even an extended pidgin must be learnt like a foreign language. However, the author also makes skilful use of the pidgin's idiomatic resources to make it clear that Sozaboy's 'rotten English' is just as capable of expressing his thoughts as the standard language to which he aspires.
In the first passage examined here, Sozaboy naively records phrases that he does not understand and their strangeness to him is echoed in the reader's recourse to the glossary; by the second passage he is a trained soldier with a gun and a uniform, confident enough to write the orders without speech marks or italics. The General's variety of English, in which novels are normally written, is here marked as different, and throughout the novel standard-speakers behaving suspiciously, confusing or betraying Sozaboy. The reader acquires a mistrust of the characters who exert authority over Sozaboy in standard English, so he or she is not surprised when the recruits begin to cry at the end of the General's speech. Their distress is due to not being able to fight, but, as the rest of the novel shows, this is the least of the pain inflicted by standard-speakers upon those disempowered by their use of pidgin.
Bibliography
Crystal, David, The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language, second edition (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge) 1997
Hall, Robert A, Pidgin and Creole Languages (Cornell University Press: Ithaca) 1966
Hudson, Kenneth, The Jargon of the Professions (The Macmillan Press: London) 1978
Saro-Wiwa, Ken, Sozaboy (Longman: New York) 1994
Todd, Loreto, Pidgins and Creoles (Routledge: London) 1974
