A Clash of Worlds: A Stylistic Analysis of Imrana’s ‘Imagine Say’

Abstract

The study explores creativity and innovation in the song (music video) ‘Imagine Say,’ by Imrana, a young Ghanaian musician. Adopting various theories and principles of Stylistics, the study identifies such creativity and innovation as parallelism, deviation, contrast, and other figures of speech, and what they foreground, in order to examine how effectively they contribute to the overall meaning and message of the song. The result indicates that the artiste adopts multimodality to express the meaning and message of the song. The diction, background scenes and chorus, sound effects, personification, repetition Parallelism, deviation, metaphor, and other figures of speech highlight the theme and meaning of the song, and thus help the audience to get the message – Discrimination and injustice against those who come from the streets (the poor and vulnerable) must cease. It is not by choice that they come from the streets; coming from the street does not make one a criminal; if any street person can be charged for any crime s/he must be given a fair hearing at a court of competent jurisdiction, rather than subjecting him/her to mob/instant justice.