An examination of linguistic elements of bilingualism in Aliyu Kamal’s life afresh

الملخص EN

This paper attempted to analyse linguistic elements born by the bilingual expertise of the author of the novel 'life afresh', based on three headings: transliteration, lexical insertion and lexical borrowing.

the study adopted, as its method of data collection, careful perusal of the primary source with the aim to identifying the related linguistic elements of the headings mentioned above that served to anchor the research paper.

other printed materials were also consulted in the course of collecting the data for the study.

the purely content and text analysis applied in explication of the data sourced from the text was restricted within the three headings.

this was to arrive at a reliable conclusion whether or not the novelist applies mixed presentation in order to get the message relayed to a wide coverage of the target audience, and to deviate from some literary styles of writing so as to create a sociolinguistic picture or form English is taking especially in places where it is not native.

the study provided that the author uses expressions that are purely Hausa via English words.

these forms of expressions cannot be easily understood by someone who does not understand Hausa because they are products of pragmatic transfer.

the paper concluded that the author employs words from his first language, hence L1 and some linguistic expressions of the L1 while using his second language, hence L2 as medium of transmission.

the study finally recommends that similar studies of literary text be conducted in order to bring to light the linguitic expertise of weaving expressions usually created by products of bilingual acumen.