Lexicogrammatical Analysis of Niyi Osundare’s “The Leader and the Led”

Abstract

This study presents a comprehensive lexicogrammatical analysis of Niyi Osundare’s poem “The Leader and the Led,” utilizing Michael Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as its theoretical framework. The analysis examines the poem’s ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions to uncover how Osundare’s linguistic choices construct a powerful critique of authoritarian leadership while proposing an alternative model based on service and collective responsibility. Adopting a qualitative descriptive design, the study systematically analyzes the poem’s transitivity patterns, mood and modality structures, thematic progression, cohesive devices, and clause complex relations. The findings reveal that the poem’s initial stanzas rely heavily on material processes to portray animal-leaders as agents of domination, while the closing stanzas shift to relational processes that redefine leadership as an identity of service. Interpersonally, the poem employs declarative mood and imperatives to establish a prophetic voice that engages the reader in moral deliberation. Textually, thematic consistency, lexical repetition, and parallelism create cohesion and reinforce the poem’s central binary between false and true leadership. Logico-semantic relations of projection create ironic distance from the leaders’ claims, while adversative enhancement marks the poem’s ideological pivot. The study concludes that Osundare’s lexicogrammatical artistry is not merely decorative but functions as the engine of his social critique, demonstrating how grammar itself can challenge power structures. The paper recommends the integration of SFL-based approaches into literary pedagogy and encourages further comparative analyses of African poetry.