LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 25:2 February 2025
ISSN 1930-2940

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Evaluation as Ecolinguistic Device in Helon Habila’s Oil on Water

Gloria Yakubu, Nden Julius Nimnan, Ojiakor Peace Amara and Kotiya Babayo Philip


Courtesy: www.amazon.com

Abstract

This study examines the thematic concerns in Helon Habila’s Oil on Water from an ecolinguistic perspective. The objective is to identify the linguistic means through which evaluation as an ecolinguistic tool is realised in the text and to describe how this tool is deployed in portraying the thematic concerns discussed by the author. Using evaluation as one of the toolkits proposed by Arran Stibbe in his ecolinguistics framework, the study analysed five sample texts purposively extracted from Habila’s Oil on Water. The findings reveal that evaluation in the analysed texts is constructed using a variety of sentence types, pronominal reference, additive and adversative conjunctions, nominals, verbal, linguistic contrast, and descriptive and evaluative lexical items. Sentence types such as complex and compound-complex sentences help clarify, elaborate, and construct a multidimensional depiction of the environmental issues Habila conveys in the text. The study concludes that the creative utilisation of evaluation as an ecolinguistic device attests to Habila’s novel being mainly information-laden and fact-given.

Keywords: Helon Habila, Oil on Water, Ecolinguistics, Environmental concerns.

Introduction

Helon Habila’s Oil on Water presents the sordid reality of the Niger Delta. The text discusses issues such as the devastating effects of environmental pollution in the Niger Delta, the neglect of the people by the authorities concerned as a result of corruption in Nigeria, and the resultant social unrest in the region (Koussouhon, & Dossoumou, 2015). The story is told through the eyes of a young journalist, Rufus, who hunts down a story in search of his big break. He accompanies his mentor, Zaq, a man haunted by his past, into the winding creeks. Their mission is to find the wife of an expatriate oil worker held for ransom by militants. An army intervention, run-ins with militants, and illness punctuate the journey. In the end, Rufus finds another truth he had not been seeking. The text captures an apt representation of the endless cycle of death and decay in the Niger region (Imossan, et al., 2025). Corrupt oil companies exploit small communities supported by the greedy government. The militants in the text are not black or white. They blow up the pipelines, polluting the waters. To them, it is the only way to get the attention of the companies that break lives while looking for new places to sink their pipelines. People are not faultless with greed, and sometimes, they overcome rationality. Through his mastery skills, the writer can use imagery to portray the damaged waters, the dead fish, and the burning villagers. The yellowed eyes of hungry souls and the looks of terror in the eyes of men whose lives were cut shut. In addition, the writer shows how politics has permeated every inch of our relations (Komolafe et al., 2025) and how poverty and oppression have pushed a narrative of silence even on the ones who need to speak the truth. Considering the significance of Habila’s environmental text, the present paper seeks to examine the concerns raised in the text from the perspective of ecolinguistics. The objective is to identify the linguistic means through which evaluation is realized in the text and describe how evaluation as an ecolinguistic tool has been used to appraise these issues (Edem & Aluya, 2023).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Gloria Yakubu
Department of English and Literary Studies
Bingham University Karu
Nasarawa State, Nigeria
gabrielayakubu078@gmail.com

Nden Julius Nimnan
Department of English and Literary Studies
Bingham University Karu
Nasarawa State, Nigeria
nimanj8@gmail.com

Ojiakor Peace Amara
Department of English and Literary Studies
Bingham University Karu
Nasarawa State, Nigeria
ojiakorpeace2o18@gmail.com

Kotiya Babayo Philip
Department of English and Literary Studies
Bingham University Karu
Nasarawa State, Nigeria
kotiyapphilipkoko@gmail.com
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