Abstract

Iyabode Omolara Daniel, PhD

Leadership has usually been seen as the ability to control others. Women leaders are thus usually portrayed as tyrants that wish to oppress others due to one social maladjustment or the other. Literature had been mostly used to stereotypically present women as either too weak or too masculine in terms of their leadership ability. This paper thus investigates the language employed by the lead female character, Captain Sharp, in Stella ‘Dia Oyedepo’s The Rebellion of the Bumpy-chested. The lexical choices made by Captain Sharp and other rhetorical devices like repetitions, affirmatives and face threatening acts were isolated and critiqued. It was found that through these linguistic choices, Captain Sharp is able to exert a great deal of power on the women and cause them to succeed in their revolutionary intentions. The playwright was able to portray the lead character thus as a very successful leader. The paper however concludes that being a successful leader requires more than being able to control others through linguistic power-play. A responsible leader is expected to be eventually accountable, both to those they lead and the moral mores of the society.