CONTEXT, STYLE AND MEANING IN SELECTED POEMS OF REMI RAJI, GBEMISOLA ADEOTI AND SOLA OWONIBI

Contemporary Nigerian poetry has continued to engage dynamically with socio-political, cultural and economic realities, reflecting the complexities of postcolonial experience and the lived conditions of society. Within this context, poetry functions not only as an artistic medium but also as a form of social discourse through which poets interrogate issues such as governance, corruption, marginalisation, identity and human resilience. This study, titled Context, Style and Meaning in the Selected Poems of Remi Raji, Gbemisola Adeoti and Sola Owonibi, is motivated by the need to move beyond purely thematic readings of poetry to a more systematic understanding of how meaning is constructed through the interaction of context and stylistic choices. The study therefore aims to explore this interaction by: identifying the dominant discourse issues and themes in the selected poems; describing the dimensions of context embedded in the poems; examining the major stylistic and poetic devices employed by the poets and determining the thematic and stylistic similarities and differences across their works. This study is anchored on Aspects of M. A. K. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) which conceptualises language as a social semiotic system and provides the analytical tools of field, tenor and mode for examining the relationship between language and context. The framework is complemented by Aspects of Bayo Lawal’s Pragmatic Theory of Literary Analysis which accounts for meaning in terms of speaker intention, contextual inference and reader interpretation. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative descriptive research design, employing a purposive sampling technique to select fifteen poems, five from each poet, based on their thematic relevance and stylistic richness. The data are analysed through an integrated approach combining contextual, stylistic and pragmatic analysis in order to systematically account for how meaning is constructed in the selected poems. The findings reveal that the selected poems are deeply rooted in socio-political and socio-economic realities, addressing issues such as governance failure, corruption, marginalisation, identity and human resilience. The study establishes that contextual variables such as field, tenor and mode significantly influence stylistic choices and meaning construction across the poems. While Remi Raji employs dense metaphor, symbolism and ideological intensity to convey political consciousness and resistance, Gbemisola Adeoti utilises satire, irony and rhetorical indirection to expose institutional contradictions and social injustice. In contrast, Sola Owonibi adopts a simple, narrative and empathetic style to foreground the lived experiences of marginalised individuals. The analysis further demonstrates both thematic convergence in socio-political engagement and stylistic divergence in expressive strategies, confirming that meaning in the poems emerges through the interaction of context, stylistic features and pragmatic inference. The study concludes that meaning in contemporary Nigerian poetry is fundamentally context-driven and stylistically mediated. It therefore affirms the relevance of context-sensitive and linguistically grounded approaches to literary analysis.