Résumé:
This dissertation examines Ben Okri’s use of antonyms in his Booker prize novel, The
Famished Road (1992) to show relationships between groups in Nigeria during the postcolonial era.
A stylistic analysis of the novel reveals the socio-political effectiveness in the system. It also reveals
the hard social contact of groups such as the colonizer vs the colonized; the spiritual vs the natural;
the rich vs the poor; the white vs the black; the politician vs the inhabitant; the urban vs the rural,
etc. Drawing insights about postcolonial theory that is based on binary terms, the novel is analyzed
using stylistics to find out what purposes the author used numerous oppositional pairs in the work.
The analysis of the text shows the imposition of the strong over the weak. Through applying the
model of Short and Leech (1981), the use of language and style in Okri’s novel is examined, mainly
the antonymous words. Thus, in order to explain the functions of such pairs in interpreting the
general aims of the novel, it focuses on how a literary text is interpreted from a linguistic point of
view in relation to the social semiotic aspect of language. Thus, I came up with the conclusion that
opposites are well used by the author to show his ideology
