A stylistic study of patterned repetition in Ghanaian hiplife lyrics

Abstract

This study is a stylistic analysis of the dominant patterned repetition – schemes – in Ghanaian Hiplife lyrics. Schemes constitute a broad range of repetitive structures in literature. They represent the grammatical or linguistic breach of expressions, literally, to allow further emphasis and attention through some elements of repetition manifested in the phonological, graphological or formal patterning of these expressions. Data for this study came from fourteen hit Hiplife songs released between 1994 and 2018. The data were analysed within Leech’s (1969) framework for the stylistic analysis of schemes. The analysis revealed that both free repetition and parallelism were used in the data. Free repetition manifested in various kinds, such as epizeuxis and ploce, while epistrophe, symploce, anadiplosis and epanalepsis were the kinds of parallelism found in the data. These schemes were used to achieve an aesthetic effect and also highlight the necessity borne out of spontaneity and artistry of delivery of message. The paper has implications for literary studies in schools as the data are readily available and familiar to current students Again, it has huge relevance to African Stylistics as the concept has been generally seen as alien to the African context.