Unnaming and mis/naming as a thematic strategy in Bulawayo's We need new names and Tagwira's The Uncertainty of Hope
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Previously, names in literary contexts were generally treated as peripheral lexical items or mere identity tags for the personages and geo-spaces in texts. Yet, recently, the subject has become a polemical one, accorded much scholarly attention as evident in a remarkable upsurge of fascinating examination of literary names and a profound increase in academic conversations about naming practices in fictive landscapes. What is more interesting is the argument that names in fictive discourse are an inherent and indispensable part of the textual composition which contributes to the overall semantics of the text. Drawing from this realisation, the study further explores the premise that naming is not arbitrary but rather, a salient and (sub) conscious artistic technique that provides significant semiotic avenues for the articulation and signification of nuanced and dynamic meanings. This study interrogates the stylistic, thematic functions and semantic possibilities of some toponyms, anthroponyms and charactonyms in selected contemporary Zimbabwean novels from an onomastic perspective. The study proposes that onomastics could offer critical and refreshing interpretive insights aimed to provide rich avenues of reading and decoding thematic preoccupations in the chosen novels.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
References
Alexander, J. & McGregor, J. (2013). Introduction: Politics, patronage and violence in Zimbabwe. Journal of Southern African Studies, 39(4), 749-763.
Anderson, J. M. (2007). The grammar of names. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ariel, M. (2002). The demise of a unique concept of literal meaning. Journal of Pragmatics, 30(4), 20-38.
Bakhtin, M. M., (1981). The Dialogic Imagination. Austin, the University of Texas Press.
Bulawayo, N. (2014_. We need new names. London, Vintage Books.
Bulter, J. O. (2013). Name, place and emotional space: themed semantics in literary onomastic research, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Glasgow, http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4165
Butler, J. O. (2010). The power and politics of naming: literary onomastics within dystopian fiction. MPhil (R) Thesis the University of Glasgow, http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1706/
Chitando, A. (2016). The Girl child’s Resilience and Agency in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We need new names. Journal of Literary Studies, 32 (1) 114-126.
Coates, R. (2006). A strictly Millian Approach to the Definition of the Proper Name. Mind and Language 24, 433- 444.
Dehnart, J. (2009). Name stories and name research: A name’s meaning. http://www.meaning.name/RE/accessed on December 2, 2021
Foucault, M. (1980). Power and Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. (ed) Colin Gordon, London, Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Green, M. (1999). Social History, Literary History and Historical Fiction in South Africa. Journal of African Cultural Studies 12(2), 121-136.
Koopman, A. (2002). Zulu names. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M., (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, University of Chicago Press
Likaka, O. (2009). Naming colonialism, history and collective memory in the Congo, 1870-1960. University of Wisconsin, University Wisconsin Press.
Lynch, G. (2016). “What’s in a name? The politics of naming ethnic groups in Kenya’s Cherangany Hills,” Journal of Eastern African Studies, 10(1), 208-227.
Mamvura, Z. (2014). A sociolinguistic analysis of school names in selected urban centres during the colonial period in Zimbabwe (1890-1979) Pretoria: University of South Africa.
Mangena, T. 2017. The Woman Victim in a Country in Crisis: A Reading of Tagwira’s The Uncertainty of Hope. International Journal of African Renaissance Studies Multi-Inter- and Transdisciplinarity, 12(2), 56-67.
Manini, L. (1998). Meaningful Literary Names: Their Forms and Functions and their Translation. The
Translator 2(2), 161-178.
Mashiri, P. & Chabata, E. (2010). A Country of Four Names: Zimbabwe’s Name Changes and their Significance, ZAMBEZIA, Special Issue, 16-28.
Mashiri, P., Chabata, E. & Chitando, E. (2013). A socio-cultural and linguistic analysis of postcolonial Christian naming practices in Zimbabwe,” Journal for Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, 2(2), 163-173.
Mavengano, E. & Hove, M. L. (2019). Kaka country: An Intertextual reading of national dysfunction in Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Jinga’s One Foreigner’s Ordeal, Literator 40(1) a1595, https://doi.org/10.4102/lit.v40il.1595
Mbarachi, C. S. & Igwenyi, E. (2018). Language, Identity and the Cultural Context of Names in selected Nigerian Novels, International Journal of language and Literature, 6(1), 29-37.
Mbembe, A., (1992). The banality of power and the aesthetic of vulgarity in the colony. Pubic Culture, 4(2), 1-30.
Muchemwa, K. (2005). Some Thoughts on Historical Memory and Writing in Zimbabwe. In Versions of Zimbabwe, New Approaches to Literature and Culture, R. Muponde and R. Primorac (eds.), 195–202. Harare: Weaver Press.
Muchemwa, K. Z. (2010). Galas, Biras, State Funerals and the Necropolitan imagination in the re-construction of the Zimbabwean nation 1980-2008. Social Dynamics, A Journal of African Studies, 36 (3), 504-514.
Ngoshi, T. H. (2016). “Carnivalising Postcolonial Zimbabwe: The Vulgar and Grotesque Logic of Postcolonial Protest in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need new names (2013)”, Journal of Literary Studies, 32(1) 53-69.
Nyambi, O. & Mangena, T. (2015). The past in the present and future: Ambivalent names and naming patterns in post-2000 Zimbabwe, South African Journal of African Languages, 35(1), 139-145.
Nyambi, O. (2013). Nation in Crisis: Alternative literary representations of Zimbabwean post-2000. Ph.D. Thesis, Stellenbosch Town, Stellenbosch University.
Odom, M. (2013). Lexical representation as innovations in Nigerian English usage, IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 7(6), 48-56.
Okello, B. (2021). What’s in a name? Re-inventing Luo naming system in Kenya’s ethnopolitical landscape, African Identities, 19(1), 77-90.
Tagwira, V. (2006). The Uncertainty of hope, Harare. Weaver Press.
Vasvari, L. O. (2010). Obscene Onomastics in Medieval Trickster Tales, eHumanista, 15(1), 1-20.
Viriri, M. (2018). Naming, Identity, and Gender constructions: A Phenomenological Study of Zezuru personal names, Ph.D. Thesis, Durban: University of KwaZulu Natal.
Watanabe, N. (2005). Poetics of Japanese Naming Practice, Names, 53(1-2), 21-48.
Windt, B. (2005). An Overview of Literary Onomastics in the Context of Literary Theory, Onoma 40, 43–63.