The Child’s Liberating Tone in Patriarchal African Setting: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Elvis Oke’s Utterances to his Father in Chris Abani’s GraceLand

This article looks into the utterances of a child-character named Elvis Oke to break the dictates of the patriarchal African society in Chris Abani’s GraceLand. This investigation is carried out under the scope of his assertive and liberating tone which sounds advocated by the third generation of African writers and leading exponents of language of equality between adults and children as illustrated by Abani. Basically, the thrust of the work is to examine the personae of both the child and the father through the selection of diverse statements in various circumstances. Taking focuses on the critical discourse analysis as a research tool, the paper aims at examining the child-character’s biting response to his father and beyond the adults so as to foster his father or the fathers in general to be more responsible and then promote mutual respect between adults and children in the modern world.