The Impact of Mood and Modality on Meaning in Tunji Ogundimu’s Mountain of gold: Focus on three extracts

Abstract

Language use varies according to the speaker’s / writer’s idiolect or style, but the style itself depends on the context. The Hallidayan framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics distinguishes three register variables related to the context of situation: field, tenor and mode. Based on this theoretical framework, the present article looks into the tenor of discourse in three extracts from Tunji Ogundimu’s novel Moutain of gold (2017). Such an investigation amounts to examining the functioning of mood types and modality items in the excerpts under consideration. At various levels, the study reveals some incompatibility between the social role primarily assigned to the main character and the language he uses when addressing his different interlocutors. Above all, this incompatibility essentially confirms the description made on the back cover, having it that the novel is "a challenging pointer to the profligacy of the unenlightened with the poison of moral frivolity."