Linguistic Counterpoint in Gbenga Agbenugba’s

This essay examines Gbenga Agbenugba’s Another Lonely Londoner (1991), a rarely discussed novel recounting the experiences of a young Nigerian man living in London. The narrative is written in an experimental style mixing English with Nigerian Pidgin, and including elements of Nigerian English, Black British English, Cockney, and Yoruba. By way of introduction, Agbenugba’s work is briefly discussed in relation to the novel that inspired it, Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956). An analysis is then undertaken of the interaction between English and Nigerian Pidgin in Another Lonely Londoner, both in dialogue and in narrative passages, with a view to assessing the impact of the combined use of these languages on possible literary interpretations of the novel. The other codes, varieties, and linguistic influences revealed in the book also receive systematic treatment, and it gradually appears that all these elements combine to produce a complex polyphonic work mirroring the main character’s multifarious identity

Aesthetics · Archetype · Art · Counterpoint · Linguistics · Literature · Mirroring · Narrative · Pidgin · Polyphony · Sociology · Vernacular · Yoruba · Communication · Computer Science · History · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy