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Silence, Power, and Implicature: Linguistic Strategies of Survival in Contexts of Political Insecurity in Wole Soyinka’s The Man Died

Cite this article as: Jaiyeoba, O. O., & Adesanmi, M. A. (2026). Silence, power, and implicature: Linguistic strategies of survival in contexts of political insecurity in Wole Soyinka's The Man Died. Sokoto Journal of Linguistics and Communication Studies (SOJOLICS), 2(1), 477-487. https://doi.org/10.36349/sojolics.2026.v02i01.039

By

Jaiyeoba, Olubunmi Olutoyin1
Olubunmi.olutoyin@federalpolyilaro.edu.ng
+ 2347068676403

&

Adesanmi, Moses Ademola2
1&2General Studies Department,
Federal University of Technology, Ilaro, Nigeria
moses.adesanmi@federalpolyilaro.edu.ng

Abstract

This paper explores the linguistic strategies of survival in the context of political insecurity used by Wole Soyinka in The Man Died using the tools of implicature, presupposition, deixis and strategic silence. To unravel how Soyinka superimposes meanings over the literal level to commit covert political criticism, self-preservation and moral resistance, the study has analysed eight purposefully selected passages in the text under the guiding principles of the Grice's Theory of Conversational Implicature and Culpeper's Impoliteness Theory. The findings show that conversational implicatures can be used by the narrator to indirectly express disagreement and reveal political unjustness while minimising the risks of overt disagreement. In contrast to presuppositions that sensitise the reader to social and political limitations, deictic expressions immerse the reader in the geographical, temporal and social setting of political repression, keeping plausible deniability alive. The paper argues that strategic silence is a form of communication and not a way of expressing resistance, restraint and/or ethical rejection. The results also show that impoliteness strategies exist to challenge power relations and to challenge the authority. Thus, the linguistic resources utilized in this study reveal the function of language in the negotiation of power, survival and resistance in a political threat situation. The study contributes to both the study of literary pragmatics and the study of African political discourse and shows that the subtle and intricate pragmatics strategies are strategies of resilience, critique and moral engagement in times of authoritarianism.

Keywords: Authority, Covert Critique, Negotiation, Subtext, Survival

1. Introduction

Language serves more than merely a communicative purpose. It is a tool for asserting power, building identity, challenging and resisting, and asserting agency in complex social and political situations. Political insecurity, authoritarian rule, surveillance, censorship or repression can make a difference to the significance of linguistic choices because direct expression can create several types of risk for speakers or writers in these contexts as a result, there are many indirect, strategic, and context-specific communication styles that people use to express meaning that can't be explicitly stated. These communicative strategies allow the speakers to negotiate power dynamics, avoid possible consequences, and keep their moral or ideological stances without being in an unfree environment (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Culpeper, 2011).

Studies have shown that meaning is not necessarily explicit, but can be implicit and understood from the context in which the message is presented and the shared understanding of the people communicating. The speaker or writer may convey complex information that goes beyond the literal content of their utterances by using strategies like implicature, presupposition, deixis and silence (Grice, 1975; Levinson, 1983).Conversational implicatures are assumptions made with a message that are not stated outright, presuppositions are assumptions that are made and left unexpressed in a message. Deictic expressions anchor the discourse in specific temporal, spatial and social contexts, which guide the audience in understanding the relationships, perspectives, and power dynamics. Though sometimes considered "no words," silence can be a powerful vehicle for saying 'no,’ resisting, restraining, or committing or taking an ethical stand in communication. These pragmatic resources, combined, offer significant means by which people "manage" meanings and power in politically charged contexts.

In this context, the work of Wole Soyinka, in his prison memoir The Man Died, is informative. The text is written from the perspective of imprisonment during the Nigerian civil war, and records the psychological, political and ethical problems with state repression. The memoir is not only historically and literary important, but it also provides insight into the ways that a language can serve as a tool for survival, resistance and political involvement. Soyinka often speaks criticism of oppressive structures indirectly, so that readers need to actively interpret the message. By employing the strategic use of implicatures and presuppositions, he can reveal injustice, challenge authority and critique political figures without necessarily making a direct accusation. Likewise, deictic expressions place the reader in specific political, temporal and social realities and increase the “here-and-now” nature of the experiences being described. Another important communicative resource that emerges from strategic silence is resistance, moral integrity and ethical refusal, as the resistance is not evident in the words, but rather in the way they are being used (Jeyifo, 2004; Gibbs, 2006).

Soyinka's works have received a great deal of scholarly interest. In his literary and autobiographical works, themes explored include political resistance, nationalism, imprisonment, identity, ideology, human rights and postcolonial critique (Adegoju, 2017; Jeyifo, 2004). Other scholars have delved into other dimensions of language use and discourse in Soyinka's works from stylistic, rhetorical, and pragmatic points of view. The current scholarship, however, has largely concentrated on theme and ideology, and not on the interplay of particular pragmatic resources as tools for living and acting in situations of political crisis. Although some discussions of language, power, and discourse are present in earlier work, a greater focus could be given to a detailed analysis of a complicated relationship between implicature, presupposition, deixis, and strategic silence that is able to create covert political criticism and enable communicative survival within The Man Died. This study, therefore, examines how implicature, presupposition, deixis and strategic silence are used as strategies of power and survival in the context of political insecurity in The Man Died, using theory of Impoliteness and Theory of Conversational Implicature form Grice and Culpeper to unravel how the pragmatic tools help Soyinka to communicate resistance to oppressive authority, challenge oppressive authority, maintain personal safety and involve readers in the process of politicizing meaning. The study makes a contribution to the field of literary pragmatics, discourse studies and African literary scholarship by showing how fine nuances of language can serve as potent tools of resilience, critique, and ethical action amidst political peril.

1.1 Objectives of the Study

Determine the cases of presuppositions, deixis, and strategic silence in the chosen passages of Soyinka stories.

 Examine the role of these linguistic strategies to mediate power relations and hidden criticism in the context of political threat.

 Explore how the strategies make the readers active interpreters, moral thinkers and ideologically conscious.

2. Literature Review

There has been a considerable interest in the language/power/resistance connection in pragmatics, discourse studies and postcolonial literary research. The consensus among scholars is that language is not merely a tool for conveying information; it also serves as a social and political tool that helps people negotiate aspects of authority, identity, and survival in situations of repression (Mey, 2001; Verschueren, 1999). In politically volatile contexts, the speakers or writers may use indirect communicative strategies to express their disagreement without taking any risk to themselves. As a result, notions like presupposition, deixis, implicature and silence have become important analytic tools for the study of the encoding and interpretation of meaning in politically sensitive discourse. The topic of presupposition has been extensively discussed in pragmatic literature because it can express presuppositions indirectly.

Early scholars like Stalnaker (1974) and Karttunen (1974) hold the view that presuppositions are background assumptions that speakers take for granted for the interlocutors. Levinson (1983) also shows how presuppositions enable speakers to state an ideology without stating it explicitly. Although these basic studies lay the groundwork for the understanding of the importance of presupposition, they tend to be primarily concerned with the speech of everyday interaction and not the speech of literary genres. Recent literary-pragmatic studies propose that presupposition is a rhetorical tool that assists the reader to interpret the text in a certain way without being explicitly told (Chapman & Clark, 2014).In politically charged narratives, presuppositions allow the writer to be indirect in his or her criticism of social realities, which is completely appropriate in contexts where the writer is likely to be censured or persecuted for the explicit nature of his or her criticism. Deixis is another important pragmatic resource because it involves linguistic expressions that require context to understand them, such as time, place, and social relationships (Levinson, 1983).

Fillmore (1997) and Hanks (1992) stress the function of deictic expressions in creating social views and relations between the participants in the events described. The extension of this perspective comes from literary scholars, who have theorised that deixis can produce experiential proximity (Stockwell, 2002) in the reader, thereby drawing him or her into fictional and autobiographical worlds. But much of the past research has been on deixis in terms of style, not political positioning. The restriction is clearly felt in the analyses of African political writing as far as its use of deictic devices in the development of resistance, solidarity and morality are concerned. Similarly, the idea of the use of silence as a communicative action has received significant academic attention. Theories of the pragmatic approach tend to value verbal communication, but later research shows that silence can serve as a communicative means (Jaworski, 1993).

According to the politeness theory (Brown and Levinson 1987), silence can be a face-saving tactic, whereas other more critical perspectives see silence as a means of resistance, protest, or moral positioning. For Adegoju (2017), in African political conversations, silence often says more than words in opposition to the authority of the state. However, previous research has focused on silence in political communication and not literary narratives. As a result, there is still a lack of awareness on the part of readers of the ways in which narrative silences serve as political critiques in literary works. The analysis of language and power adds further impetus to the applicability of pragmatic analysis to politically sensitive literature. According to some critical discourse scholars like Fairclough (1995) and van Dijk (2008), the linguistic choices reflect and reproduce the power relationships. While these analyses have yielded important conceptual understandings of ideology and domination, they tend to be more macro-level, in terms of the pragmatic mechanisms, and more practical. Literary-pragmatic approaches, on the contrary, focus on how readers infer meaning based on the context, shared knowledge, and interpretive participation (Mey, 2001). This is especially helpful when reading texts written in a context of political repression where meaning is often hidden in indirect forms of expression.

The research on Wole Soyinka has been mainly political, satirical and ideological resistance (Jeyifo, 2004; Gibbs, 2006). These studies effectively attest to Soyinka's struggle against authoritarianism and social injustice. However, their focus is mostly thematic and ideological with a limited focus on specific linguistic mechanisms of communication of resistance. Despite a recognition of the use of irony, symbolism, and indirect discourse, researchers have so far not really examined in any systematic manner the role of pragmatic devices like presupposition, deixis, and strategic silence in working together to become a survival strategy in politically unfriendly contexts. This is a conspicuous gap that only few have researched the linguistic processes by which political criticism is conveyed indirectly, while involving the reader as an active interpreter. Thus, this study adds to the previous researches on presupposition and deixis in Soyinka's stories, and the study of strategic silence is done pragmatically. The study explores the interconnections between these strategies in politically charged discourse, transcending thematic interpretations and provides a micro-level analysis of the role of language as a survival tool and means to resistance.

3. Methodology

The study adopts a qualitative descriptive-analytical research design in studying the implicature, presupposition, deixis and strategic silence as the linguistic devices Soyinka uses to survive and resist in environments of political insecurity. The qualitative approach is used because the study aims to interpret meaning of the discourse in the text and it does not require measuring the linguistic features quantitatively. This enables the study of pragmatic and stylistic decisions and how these decisions contribute to the formation of political criticism, resistance and self-preservation (Creswell & Creswell, 2018).The descriptive-analytical design also helps to provide close textual analysis as it connects the linguistic forms with their contextual and ideological functions in the selected texts, as described by Silverman (2016).

The major corpus of the study is The Man Died plus selected political reflections and commentaries by Soyinka on topics like authoritarianism, political repression, corruption, and civic resistance. The study used purposive sampling because the passages of study are the ones that are relevant to the study goals. In total, there were eight extracts of text that were chosen for analysis. The selected passages fulfilled the following criteria: (i) they were found in contexts of political insecurity or state repression; (ii) the passages included evidence of implicit or indirect communication; and (iii) the passages included one or more of the pragmatic features of a passage examined, implicature, presupposition, deixis, or strategic silence. Purposive sampling is a popular method in qualitative research to select information-rich cases that are most relevant to the phenomenon under investigation (Palinkas et al., 2015).The data collection process included several close readings of the selected texts to find the linguistic features used in the texts related to the study. The excerpts were taken during the reading and categorised by four analysis types: implicature, presupposition, deixis and strategic silence.

The analysis was conducted in three stages. The first step was to mark up and classify the relevant parts of the texts to the four categories of analysis. The second stage was pragmatic analysis wherein the text is analysed by applying Grice's Theory of Conversational Implicature to determine how the implicit meaning was produced and understood in the text. Special attention was given to cases where the reader had to draw an inference of criticism, resistance, or political judgement beyond the literal meaning of the text. The third phase was based on the Impoliteness Theory by Culpeper and focused on the ways in which these meanings challenged authority, threatened institutional face, or acted as resistance towards oppressive political structures. Strategic silence was examined in connection with both frameworks, with regard to meanings created or inferred by the absence of expression and to the meanings communicated by the use of a limited repertoire of expression. Silence and omission of expression and the communication of meanings of ideological opposition were analysed in relation to both frameworks. Finally, the results from the various analytical categories were combined to interpret the role and working of the linguistic choices collectively as survival and resistance strategies in Soyinka's writings. Each extract was examined in the context of the broader historical, political and narrative context to maintain interpretive credibility. In relation to the interpretation, the process of contextualization was used to ensure that the interpretations were grounded in the contexts of the texts and were in line with the theoretical framework of the study.

4. Theoretical Framework

This study adopts a pragmatic-stylistic framework that integrates Grice’s Theory of Conversational Implicature (1975) and Culpeper’s Impoliteness Theory (2011). The combination of these theories provides a comprehensive framework for examining how linguistic meaning is constructed and how such meaning functions within unequal power relations.

4.1 Grice’s Theory of Conversational Implicature

Grice (1975) argues that communication involves more than the literal meanings of words. Speakers frequently generate additional meanings, known as implicatures, which listeners infer through contextual knowledge and the Cooperative Principle. These implicatures often arise when conversational maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner are deliberately exploited or flouted. The theory is especially useful for analysing discourse produced under politically sensitive conditions, where explicit criticism may be dangerous.

In The Man Died, implicature provides a framework for understanding how meanings of resistance, dissent, and political criticism are communicated indirectly. Presuppositions often invite readers to accept certain political realities as already established, thereby encouraging critical interpretation without overt assertion. Likewise, deictic expressions position readers within specific social, temporal, and political contexts from which power relations can be inferred. Strategic silence also operates within an inferential framework because meaning is generated not only through what is said but also through what is deliberately left unsaid. In such instances, readers are required to draw conclusions from textual gaps, omissions, and narrative restraint. Grice’s theory therefore explains how Soyinka communicates sensitive political meanings while avoiding direct confrontation.

4.2 Culpeper’s Impoliteness Theory

Culpeper’s (2011) Impoliteness Theory examines communicative behaviour that damages, challenges, or threatens face. Unlike politeness theories that focus on maintaining social harmony, impoliteness theory highlights how language can be used to contest authority, express hostility, or disrupt established relationships. The theory is particularly valuable in contexts where power relations are central to communication.

In the context of Soyinka’s prison memoir, impoliteness does not necessarily appear as overt verbal aggression. Rather, resistance may be realised through indirect forms of communicative challenge. Criticism conveyed through implicature, presupposition, selective deictic positioning, or strategic silence can function as a challenge to the legitimacy of oppressive institutions and political actors. Strategic silence is especially significant in this regard. Although silence is not inherently impolite, its deliberate use in contexts of political domination may communicate refusal, non-compliance, moral judgement, or withdrawal of recognition. Such meanings can be interpreted as face-threatening because they symbolically reject the authority or legitimacy of those in power. Consequently, silence functions not merely as the absence of speech but as a communicative act with potential interpersonal and political implications.

The integration of Grice’s and Culpeper’s theories enables a multidimensional analysis of the selected texts. Grice’s framework explains how implicit meanings are generated and interpreted, while Culpeper’s framework explains how those meanings operate as forms of resistance within contested power relations. Together, they illuminate how presupposition, deixis, and strategic silence function as linguistic strategies through which Soyinka negotiates survival, critiques oppression, and engages readers in the interpretation of political meaning.

5. Data Analysis and Discussion

This part analyses eight chosen passages of The Man Died by Wole Soyinka and his political commentaries and how presupposition, deixis, and strategic silence serve as survival, moral, and political resistance linguistic strategies. The analysis uses the Theory of Conversational Implicature (1975) by Grice in the context of understanding the use of indirect meaning and the Impoliteness Theory (2011) by Culpeper in the context of understanding subtle hostile or face-threatening aspects of discourse.

5.1 Excerpts from The Man Died

Excerpt 1 – Presupposition and Moral Responsibility

 “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.”  (Soyinka, 1972, p. 21)

The quote assumes the existence of tyranny and moral complicity that silence is. Through presupposition, Soyinka expresses the moral judgment in an indirect manner, making it safe and yet educating the readers. The maxim of Relation of Grice is violated, and the readers have to guess the moral responsibility, which is implied. Considering it as impoliteness, this is an indirect face-attack, which indirectly criticizes people who do not take action. This is a representation of the role of presupposition in both ethical and political criticism, when there is repression. The viewer is placed as a decoder of action and inaction, which increases ideology.

Excerpt 2 – Deixis and Contextual Orientation

 “Here, the walls have ears; what we say travels beyond our sight.”  (Soyinka, 1972, p. 45)

The deictic words here and beyond our sight put the reader in the physical and political space in the way of stressing surveillance. This deixis emphasises the limitations of the prison and the positioning of the speaker in relationship with the authority. Deictic anchoring enables the readers to feel the immediacy of the political insecurity, to demonstrate the way in which the spatial and temporal markings can be used as the survival strategies, to inform the audience to interpret the risk and resistance.

Excerpt 3 – Strategic Silence and Implicature

 “I refrained from speaking; some truths are heavier than words.”  (Soyinka, 1972, p. 67)

The strategic silence, in this case, is an effective action: the silence means moral restraint and political survival. There is the element of Gricean implicature, where the audience gets to know about the muted criticism. According to Culpeper, this is decoded in the model as covert impoliteness, since it argues the position of authority indirectly and does not place the safety of the speaker at risk.

Excerpt 4 – Combined Presupposition and Deixis

 “Those who watch us now will live to tell of the fear they saw.”  (Soyinka, 1972, p. 89)

Presupposition claims surveillance, whereas, deixis (now) puts the audience in the here and now. The implicit nature of the critique conveyed by the sentence compels the audience to do ethical interpretation. This shows that there are several linguistic strategies that occur together to mediate power and moral consciousness that connects the language at the micro-level to the language at the macro-level.

5.2 Excerpts from Soyinka’s Political Reflections

Excerpt 5 - Presupposition in Political Critique

 “Corruption thrives where honesty is merely tolerated.”   (Gibbs, 2006, p. 112)

The assumption is that there is an honesty that is poorly implemented. The implicature is the systemic critique that does not address particular actors. This is an indirect face-threatening action towards corrupt authorities, a covert example of criticism, in a Culpeperian view, as a survival and communicative maneuver.

Excerpt 6 - Deixis and Positioning the Audience

 “In these halls of power, one is never truly alone.”    (Gibbs, 2006, p. 118)

Such deictic markers as these and never truly alone place the readers in a relational and political arena and underline the observation, surveillance, and positioning. It shows that language puts audiences into place to identify the dangers of political involvement by emphasizing the pragmatic application of deictic anchoring by Soyinka.

Chapter 7 - Strategic Silence as Strategy of Ethical Resistance

 “I did not reply to their questions; silence can be louder than speech.”    (Gibbs, 2006, p. 125)   

The silence is a rhetorical device. Gricean implicature can be interpreted by the viewer to mean the implication of criticism; Culpeperian analysis suggests that it is a disguised act of hostile intention, the opposite of confrontation expressed indirectly. So as per the objective, it is important to demonstrate that silence is an effective mediator of resistance, a way of maintaining safety and expressing ideological position.

Excerpt 8 – Integrated Presupposition, Deixis, and Silence

 “When they came for the innocents, no one spoke; yet everyone knew   the cost.” (Gibbs, 2006, p. 130)

The assumption is the oppression, deixis (when they came) makes the event time-related, and silence expresses the mutual awareness of moral hazard. The implicature is evident: it is inevitable to be complicit in case of speech failure. This passage combines all the three strategies of language, demonstrating how the stories of Soyinka make the reader an ethical decoder and puts the criticism under the threat of violence.

6. Integrated Discussion

These are the main patterns that were identified in the analysis of these eight excerpts. First is that presupposition is applied as subvert criticism. Soyinka incorporates presumptions regarding oppression, complicity and corruption and hence the audience has to build an ethical and political interpretation. On the same note, deixis is also contextual anchoring. Spatial, temporal and relational cues place readers into immediate or relational contexts of political insecurity that provide a better understanding of power relationships. Strategic silence is also used as resistance. To Soyinka, silence is a communicative act and can be used to denote rejection, moral restraint or ethically denying an issue without necessarily using words to express it. In many cases, presupposition, deixis, and silence work together and create a stratified meaning that both conveys criticism and guarantees survival and makes the audience the meaning makers. The results indicate that the language techniques that Soyinka is applying are intentional, performative, and ideologically powerful, which enables him to travel in politically insecure spaces, as well as teach and entertain the audience. Although these strategies are not the focal point, humor, irony and some sense of sub-hostility definitely interact with them and accentuate the resistance purposes of the texts under discussion as well.

7. Conclusion

This paper has demonstrated that Wole Soyinka uses presupposition, deixis and strategic silence as conscious linguistic devices to negotiate the political insecurity, establish agency and convey resistance. Using the criticism of eight important passages of The Man Died along with his political commentaries, the paper will show that the narratives of Soyinka function both at the micro-linguistic and macro-political scales: unobtrusively, exposing the authoritarianism, and leaving the reader as the active interpreter of the ethical and political realities. Presupposition allows embedding of critique and moral comment unto the explicit confrontation and thus leave the readers to draw socio-political implications. Deictic phrases place narratives in time, space and relation with each other, which emphasise the immediacy of oppression and the play of power. Strategic silence is a performative dissent or dissent strategy, which allows legitimising under surveillance or authoritarian restriction, and moral negotiation, covert critique. The combination of such strategies co-occurs to create meanings that are stratified, pass across ideological messages, and protect the speaker.

Finally highlighted, too, is the proactive status of the audience where some interpretation of omissions must be taken thus the audience participate in the moral and political speech inherent in the stories of Soyinka. This is an indication of the performative and interpretive force of language that shows how quietness, indirectness and selective linguistic packaging can be used as effective survival and resistance tools. Overall, this paper adds to the body of scholarship on literature pragmatics and postcolonial political literature, highlighting the fact that micro-level linguistic strategies, such as presupposition, deixis, and strategic silence, are not merely stylistic devices but also work to indirectly critique, engage in morality, and negotiate politics. Soyinka has presented in his works how literature may turn language into a ground of moral thinking, survival and unspoken political criticism.

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