A Hermeneutical Study of Wole Soyinka's The Interpreters

This research adopts an interdisciplinary approach by combining the conceptual tools and insights of linguistic analysis with literary elucidation. In our textual explication, linguistics is employed to solve the problem of interpretation by showing us in rigorous and objective ways how our experience of The Interpreters is, in part, derived from its verbal structure. Although Linguistics does not encompass literary criticism, it provides the perspectives for a consistent analysis and textual description of The Interpreters through the network of elegant variation, ellipses, compounding, neologisms, linguistic foregrounding as well as deictic structures and elements. Literary elucidation is evoked through an exploration of symbols, images, metaphor and mythic patterns in The Interpreters. These structural artifacts imbue The Interpreters with a unique aesthetic quality.