Challenges of Pragmatics over SFL: A Trans-Disciplinary Contrastive Inquisition into Meaning Processing Fashions via the Lion and the Jewel (Soyinka)

Abstract

Further to the Saussurean grassroots-work, the thriving of modern linguistics goes gaining an exponential momentum.
So to say, novel horizons in language exploration have given way to two fresh but powerful and challenging offsprings of
linguistics: the Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) theory and the Morrisian, Gricean and neo-gricean pragmatics.
Beyond our recognition of the individual operative potential in-borne in either discipline, we build on the scavenging and heuristic
capacity ontologically characterizing pragmatics to deem that it holds some typical advances over the SFL theory. Thus, the core
mission of this article centres around a fused double-round descriptive exploration of two extracts from Soyinka‟s Lion and The
Jewel through the sieve of toolkits inherent in both disciplines. Thence, in confronting Mood, Modality, Polarity and Adjunct
systems from the SFList universe with Presupposition, Conversational Implicature, Inference and Felicity Conditions in
Pragmatics, the work has come up with findings displaying discrepant values. A contrastive view of generated data underpins and
orients our decision over the validity of our basic postulation.