Abstract

This study investigates how Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ‘does feminism with words’ in Dear Ijeawele, or A feminist manifesto in fifteen suggestions through the lens of Searle’s speech act taxonomy. The corpus consists of the full text of the manifesto and the analysis focuses on 239 sentence-level units, including clause-level sub-units where a single sentence realises more than one illocutionary force, selected systematically from the Introduction, the framing letter and all 15 Suggestions in order to focus on segments in which illocutionary force is most explicit. Each unit is coded for its primary illocutionary force as assertive, directive, commissive, expressive or declarative, with Searle’s illocutionary point, direction of fit and sincerity condition used as the decision criteria rather than grammatical mood alone, and a secondary code is assigned where a hybrid or indirect act is present. The overall distribution shows that assertives and directives account for almost nine-tenths of all coded units, whereas commissives, expressives and declaration-like acts are relatively rare and unevenly distributed. Assertives occur most densely where Adichie challenges existing beliefs about gender, marriage, biology and language, and they function as corrective claims that prepare the ground for subsequent directives. Directives are concentrated in Suggestions that deal with repeatable parenting practices such as shared childcare, reading, language choices, appearance and difference. Commissives are largely confined to the framing material, where Adichie presents herself as someone who is trying and sharing rather than simply instructing; and expressives mark the intimate, affective tone of the opening letter. A small but significant set of utterances behave as quasi-declaratives in which Adichie attempts to rename or reclassify gendered categories such as ‘help’ and ‘likeability’, often in hybrid combinations with assertive or directive force. The findings suggest that Searle’s taxonomy remains a useful tool for analysing contemporary African feminist discourse, provided that hybrid and quasi-declarative acts are recognised explicitly and they show that Dear Ijeawele … enacts its feminist project not only through its themes but through a patterned use of speech acts that shifts the text from a private letter to a public guide on raising a feminist child.