Discourse-semantics Analysis of References in two Selected Excerpts from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah

This article seeks to explore the discourse-semantics of two selected excerpts from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah with a focus on reference chains study. The choice to focus on studying reference chains in the selected excerpts aims at first appraising the way Adichie has used them to realize texture within her studied texts. It second aims at finding the extent to which references have contributed to the encoding of underlying meanings therein. To arrive at this, the research has appealed to the mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology. Through the quantitative methodology, the data obtained after analyses have been summarized organized and presented statistically in an informative way. The qualitative methodology ensued has allowed to give sense to the most interpretable data collected. Indeed, the research has interestingly arrived at impressive results. Among several others, the research has revealed that the studied texts are highly cohesive with endophoric references largely predominating over the other reference types. Using such cohesive ties as Adichie has done, has allowed her texts not only to stick together but also to be highly readable and flow logically. Moreover, the extensive use of endophoric references, as witnessed in the studied texts, is revelatory of their mode which is archetypal of a monologic written text. In other respects, the considerable number of exophoric references in the first excerpt reveals its tenor dimension. Such a linguistic feature indicates that it was produced in a context of immediate faceto-face feedbacks with language accompanying action. On the other hand, the fewer number of the same reference type in the second excerpt reveals its field and unveils that it is a written reflective text reconstructing an experience. Drawing upon the theoretically founded analysis of the selected excerpts and the interpretation of the collected data arrived at, the research opens up to such further investigation areas of the systemic functional linguistics as the interpersonal meaning, the experiential meaning, and the textual meaning.


Introduction
Virtually all the readers of Adichie's Americanah acknowledge that it is an exquisitely written novel. Actually, Americanah is a good read. Whoever reads the novel is not surprised that it won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for fiction. Indeed, the above mentioned novel is a powerful tender story of love, race, home, immigration and identity which keeps no reader unsympathetic. So many people around the globe including myself have read it and admired it. Some among the readership have even rated it five stars. One then wonders what makes it such a good read. To be able to investigate such a concern, I have decided to carry out a discourse-semantics analysis of references in two selected excerpts from the novel.
Exploring such a research theme is significant as it allows to unveil, at the level of the semantics, the field, tenor and mode of the selected texts. Furthermore, it permits, at the discoursal level, to find out the different types of cohesion she has made use of in the selected texts to realize their textures and encode deep meanings. It is further significant because it will unquestionably pave the way for further researches by scholars within the field and serve as a mold for students majoring in linguistics and especially in systemic functional linguistics.
The research aims at first appraising the way reference chains are encoded in the selected texts. It second aims at exploring the extent to which they contribute to the uncovering of deep meanings for a better understanding of the various messages conveyed therein.
In fact, the research is premised on the hypothesis that Adichie has encoded deep meanings via the field, tenor and mode of the selected excerpts. It is also hypothesized that she has made use of different types of cohesive devices to create texture in her selected texts which makes them exquisite and closely connected pieces.
When we investigate how it is that we, as language users, make sense of what we read in texts, recognize wellconstructed texts as opposed to jumbled or incoherent discourse, and successfully interpret what other language users intend to convey, we are undertaking what is known as discourse analysis (Yule, 2010, p.141).
Language is a tri-stratal semiotic system that involves a stratum of meanings, wordings and of sounds or orthography (Eggins, 1994, p.81). The highest stratum of language viz. the stratum of meanings is also referred to as the discourse-semantics of language (Martin, 1992a) to replace earlier labeling of this stratum (e.g. by Halliday, 1978) by the single term semantics. As a matter of fact, Martin's (1992a) term: discourse-semantics is a doublebarreled one.
From Halliday's (1978Halliday's ( , 1985b perspective, the semantics part of the above mentioned double-barreled word covers the three aspects in any situation that has linguistic consequences namely field (what the language is being used to talk about), tenor (viz. the role relationships between the interactants and mode (the role language is playing in the interaction). These three aspects also called register variables are respectively associated with: the experiential meaning realized through the transitivity patterns of the grammar, the interpersonal meaning realized through the Mood patterns of the grammar and textual meaning realized through the thematic patterns of the grammar.
As for the discourse part of the discourse-semantic label, it describes the different types of texture that contribute to making texts that is to say, the resources that language has for creating a text ( Halliday & Hasan, 1976/85). As a matter of fact, texture is what holds the clauses of a text together to give them unity. In fact what belong to the discourse stratum of the systemic model are the systems of all the different text-forming resources of language. Alternatively put, the discoursal part of the discourse semantics describes the types of cohesion through which texture is realized in texts. Indeed, there are four types of cohesion: references, lexical relations, conjunctive relations and conversational structures (Eggins, 1994, pp.95-109). The design of cohesion in text is connected to semantic ties or "relations of meanings that exist within the text, and that define it as a text" (Halliday & Hassan, 1976).
In addition to the abstract, the introduction and the conclusion that rounds it off, this article goes round such cruxes as theoretical framework, methodology of the research, data analysis and the interpretation of the findings.

Theoretical Framework
The cohesive resource of reference refers to how the writer/speaker introduces participants and then keeps track of them once they are in the text (Eggins, 1994, p.81). As a matter of fact, participants are the people, places and things that get talked about in the text. The participants in the following sentence taken from the analyzed excerpts available in the appendices are in bold: "The French school is not bad, but I prefer Sidcot Hall".
Indeed, whenever a participant is mentioned in a text, the writer or speaker must signal to the reader or listener whether the identity of the participant is already known or not. More specifically participants in a text may be either presented to us viz. introduced as "new" to the text or presumed that is to say encoded in such a way that one needs to retrieve their identity from somewhere. In fact, only presuming participants create cohesion in a text, since ties of dependency are constructed between the presuming item and what it refers to i.e. its referent.
The commonest presuming reference items are: the definite article "the", the demonstrative pronouns and adjectives: "this, that, these, those"; the subject and object personal pronouns: "I you, he, she, it, we, they, me, her, him, us, them" and the possessive adjectives and pronouns: "my, your, his, her, its, our, their, mine, yours, hers, ours, theirs." It is highly important for readers or listeners to retrieve the identity of a presuming reference item used by writers or speakers in order for them to be able to follow their texts. Actually, if presuming referents are not retrievable, the interaction will run into problems. For example, note the ambiguity of the pronoun she in this fragment: My wife and my mother were at home and my daughter was with me in my office. She couldn't figure out what happened later on.
Indeed, presuming reference items identities may be retrievable from a number of different contexts. As a matter of fact, they may be retrieved from the general context of culture. For instance, when one talks about how great ilr.ideasspread.org International Linguistics Research Vol. 3, No. 3; the Almighty God is one knows which God s/he is talking about: the Almighty God people share as believers in this world. Retrievals from the shared context of culture are called homophoric references.
In other respects, presuming reference items can also be retrieved from the immediate context of situation. For example, if I tell you this:

Open it and hand it over to her
If we are in the same place at the same time you will be able to decode that "it" refers to whatever object I hold in hands or that I'm pointing to, and "her" refers to the female around. When one retrieves from a shared immediate situational context, this is called exophoric reference.
The identity of a presuming reference item can also be retrieved from within the text, in which case we are dealing with endophoric reference. It is endophoric references which create cohesion, since endophoric ties creates the internal texture of the text, while homophoric and exophoric references contribute to the text (situational) coherence. To descend to particulars, endophoric references can be of five main kinds namely anaphoric, cataphoric, esphoric, comparative and bridging.
An endophoric reference is said to be anaphoric when the referent has appeared at an earlier point in the text as He in the following example referring back to the participant Peter: Peter is a well-mannered gentleman. He is hardworking as well.
Typically, an anaphoric reference refers to a participant mentioned nearby (one or two sentences previously), but sometimes it may refer back to an item mentioned many pages/minutes or even hours ago.
Endophoric reference items can also be cataphoric particularly when the referent has not yet appeared, but will be provided subsequently. An illustrative example is the following: The point is this: I didn't know that the onus was on me to call the boss Here, the demonstrative pronoun "this" indicates a presumed referent, but one only discovers what is referred to in the immediately following clause.
When the referent occurs in the phrase immediately following the presuming referent item that is to say within the same nominal group or noun phrase, not in a separate clause, the endophoric reference is said to be esphoric. The following is an illustrative example: We ran into each other at the market place where they sell vegetables.
The definite article "the" tells us that we know which market place (it is a presuming reference item), but rather than looking back to an earlier part of the text to discover which market place, we are immediately told which one in the following part of the nominal group where they sell vegetables.
One further type of endophoric reference which can operate anaphorically, cataphorically or esphorically is the comparative reference. With comparative references, the identity of the presumed item is retrieved not because it has already been mentioned or will be mentioned in the text, but because an item with which it is being compared has been mentioned. For example, one could follow the statement Rina is poor, with sentences such as the following, each of which involves the comparative tie (the comparative reference item has been underlined): Her other problems include joblessness and loneliness.

Such problems can lead to self-hatred and despair.
A different but equally common problem is that she trusts nobody.
Something else that is happening to her is that she fails in whatever she undertakes.
One more special kind of reference is known as bridging reference. This is when a presuming reference item refers back to an early item from which it can be inferentially derived as in the following example: All these problems can lead a lady of her age to commit suicide.
Indeed, the reference item "these" signals that one knows which problems are being referred to. In fact, no previous mention of a lady of a certain age having so many problems to the point of committing suicide has been made, but one can "bridge" from Rina's problems mentioned earlier above to interpret who is being talked about.
Although reference items typically refer to a specific participant, in whole text referencing the referent may be "the text up to this point", or a sequence of actions or events mentioned previously.
A different type of reference known as locational reference, is one which involves not the identification of a participant in a text (a person or thing), but the identification of a location in time or space. As a matter of fact, locational referents to nearby time or space such as here, now, these days, at the moment, above, below are ilr.ideasspread.org International Linguistics Research Vol. 3, No. 3; frequently retrieved exophorically, while such locational items referring to distant time/space as there, then are often endophorically retrieved.

Methodology
To be able to attain the purpose of this research scientifically, two excerpts that fit to the study carried out in this article have been culled from Adichie's Americanah. In addition to that criterion of suitability to the study, both excerpts have been selected because they follow each other logically in the unfolding of the story narrated therein. More specifically, the second excerpt is the logical result of the first one. Besides, the research design appealed to in this article is that of the mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology. Following the quantitative methodology that has paved the way to the qualitative methodology, a theoretically founded reference analysis of the selected excerpts has been carried out following the discourse-semantics principle of texts description. Indeed, the units of analysis have been the selected texts. More to that point, the analysis has been carried out following the keys designed for the identification of the various references embedded in the chosen texts. In fact the description keys are presented in the appendices right before the analyses proper. Once the data have been collected, they have been summarized, organized, numerated, categorized and tabulated statistically. The qualitative methodology ensued has allowed to dig out, via the interpretation of the most interpretable recorded linguistic patterns of the excerpts, the encoded meanings of the collected data for a deeper understanding of the selected texts.

Data Analysis
The analysis has been carried out following the analysis keys presented right at the beginning of the appendices made available at the bottom of the present article. The findings of the analysis in terms of the number of references identified in the selected excerpts have been summarized, organized, numerated, categorized and tabulated statistically below for a better visibility of the recorded miscellaneous references embedded in the studied excerpts as well as their values in percentage per excerpt. Examining the statistical table above, one can notice that both selected excerpts have been conducive to the research work at hand as they embed all the different types of references presented in the theoretical section of this article though at a relatively different proportions. As a matter of fact, the first excerpt records a higher number of reference types (560) than the second excerpt that counts fewer (458) different kinds of references. In fact, the recorded summative number of references in both excerpts adds up to one thousand eighteen (1, 018). To descend to particulars, endophoric references come top in both studied excerpts with an aggregate number of 453 representing 80.89% of the overall references recorded in the first excerpt. The cumulative number of 405 on the other hand, represents 88.42% of the references recorded in the second excerpt. It is of utmost importance to remark, at this level, that the anaphoric references, a sub-category of the endophoric references class, outstandingly prevail over the other sub-categories with a crushing number of 420 in the first excerpt. They represent 75% of all the different types of references identified in the excerpt. In the second excerpt, they recorded 388 that is, 69.28% of the recorded miscellaneous references. Conversely, the esphoric references are at the bottom of the endophoric references class and count exactly the same number (01) in both studied excerpts representing, as a result, 0.17% of the recorded references in the first excerpt and 0.21% in the second excerpt. A look at the statistical table tells more about the endophoric references class and the proportions of its various sub-categories in terms of number and percentage in both studied excerpts.
The endophoric references are followed in the ranking order by the locational references which are a total of 42 (7.5%) and 25 (5.45%) in the first and the second excerpts respectively. Whether in the first or the second excerpt, the locational references to nearby time or space dominate over those to distant time or space. More specifically, while the locational references to nearby time or space are 38 viz. 6.78% of the overall reference types embedded in the first excerpt, the locational references to distant time are just 4 in number representing just 0.71% of the recorded references in that same excerpt. Likewise, in the second studied excerpt, locational references to nearby time or space get the upper hand over the locational references to distant time or space. while the former ones count a total number of 22viz. 4.80% of the whole recorded references in the excerpt, the latter ones, on the other hand, are just 03 in number i.e. 0.65% of the identified references in the except.
Homophoric references come third in rank in both studied excerpts with a total number of 32 (5.71%) and 17 (3.71%) in the first and second excerpts respectively. Exophoric references are at the bottom in the analyzed excerpts and are 33 in the first excerpt representing 5.89% of the total number of references embedded in the excerpt. The second excerpt records a largely fewer number of 11 exophoric references i.e.2.40% of all the different types of references recorded in it.
The statistical analysis of the data carried out above has helped to find out the statistical features of the studied excerpts. As for their implied meanings, they are going to be discussed in the following section.

Interpretation of the Findings
One important thing is to be able to carry out linguistic descriptions drawing upon linguistic theories. But another more important thing is to be able to provide the requisite interpretation of the linguistic patterns recorded after describing them based on theoretical perspectives. Thus, this section, as its title suggests, focalizes on the interpretation of the linguistic features displayed in the foregoing part of this article. Indeed, this part of the article is one via which essence is going to be given to the selected excerpts linguistic patterns as it is going to be devoted to the digging out of the hidden messages behind them.
The reference patterns of the studied excerpts have revealed, in the light of the above statistical table, their key participants/ characters. As a matter of fact, both excerpts are fundamentally concerned with Obinze, his wife Kosi and his former girl friend Ifemelu living abroad far away from him, still unmarried after her very last break up with a black American. In fact, the reference chains that span both studied excerpts are the ones that are related to the above mentioned participants. The self-reference and anaphoric as well as cataphoric chains that relate to the latter ones are preponderantly denser i.e. having the greater number of references than the other reference chains recorded in the studied excerpt. Through the events of both selected excerpts, which in fact go round Obinze's couple, Adichie has insightfully depicted how mismanaged old friendships especially with ex-girlfriends can negatively impact men's currently established households' harmony and happiness. Though Obinze's family is introduced to the reader as a peacefully happy one his couple is not that happy as his behavior and mindset towards his ex-girlfriend Ifemelu whom he still seems to be in love with loom a bad omen for his present family. On several occasions Obinze has been absent minded when he is with his wife Kosi just because Ifemelu his ex-girlfriend is almost always present in his mind despite Kosi's various efforts to cherish him. For example in the sixth paragraph of the second excerpt on page 427 Kosi said this "Your mind is not here". The possessive adjective "Your" in the quotation above is an anaphoric item referring back to Obinze. Truly Obinze's mind was really not with Kosi. He was fully snowed under with ideas about his ex-girlfriend though he is right now supposed to be concerned with finding out which School his little daughter Butchi would attend. Earlier on the penultimate paragraph on page 425 Kosi told Obinze the following: "Darling you're not paying attention" when he laughed at his own absurdity that he wanted to buy a ticket, get on a plane to America and be with Ifemelu to console her because in her very last e-mail she sent him as a reply to his own message to her, she told him that Dike attempted suicide and that it had been traumatic to her and had affected her. Poor lady Kosi! She thought her husband was laughing about something that had to do with his work. She could not imagine that her husband was enjoying a communication exchange he had had earlier with his ex, her possible future rival. Indeed, portraying Obinze this way as an irresponsible husband with a restless and wandering mind, highly prone to unfaithfulness, that has almost all his heart for his ex-girlfriend not for his current wife even less for his little daughter, and at the same time Kosi his actual wife undergoing such moral torture as a very hospital, peaceful, trustworthy, and well-meaning devoted woman, is Adichie's feministic trend to take revenge on some men's inconsistency, proven debauchery and second to none irresponsibility. In other respects, there is no consistency in the participants developed in both studied excerpts. Whether in the first or the second excerpt, a large number of such participants as: Mrs Akin-Cole, Mrs. Adamma, Chief, Ferdinand, Yemi, Ranyinudo, Butchi, Dele, Gabriel, Okwudiba, Marie, the Black American, Obinze's mother, Dike, Isioma and the headmistress, get introduced to the reader in addition to the main ones named above. However, they have been important for short portions of the explored texts after their introductions giving way to the narration of the key events about Obinze's household and his extra-marital friendship with his ex-girlfriend Ifemelu. These changes in participants as Obinze's story unfolds correspond to Adichie's narration of the different plots involved in that story. In the same vein, Adichie's choices of the participants that first got introduced to the readers as new and later on as presumed ones at specific points in the unfolding of her texts account for the latter ones discourse domain. Furthermore, such quick switches from and back to the main story being narrated has certainly been a narrative technique. Such a technique has been used by Adichie to break up with monotony in the narration process of her long story and to create suspense from time to time in the writing process. This technique helps keep her readers connected without boredom. This way of organizing the messages of the studied excerpts has both revealed and largely contributed to their textual semantics.
It is of utmost importance to underscore that the studied texts are highly cohesive with the endophoric references largely predominating over the other reference types. While the first excerpt records 453 endophoric references all sub-categories included representing 80.89% of the total number of 560 (100%) various references recorded in that excerpt, the second excerpt, on the other hand, counts 405 endophoric references which represents 88.42 % of the 458 (100%) different references recorded in the excerpt. Such preponderant use of endophoric references is revelatory of Adichie's writing style. Actually, in the studied excerpts, she has used excessive cohesive ties making it very easy for her readers to connect pieces of information as the different plots of the story she writes about unfold on the one hand, and to ensure that her readers guess what the main ideas of her writings are on the other hand. Using so many cohesive ties as she has done, has allowed her texts not only to stick together but also to be highly readable and flow logically. Moreover, the extensive use of endophoric references, as witnessed in the studied texts, is revelatory of their mode which is, in fact, typical of a monologic written text.
Examining the statistical pieces of information reveals that the first excerpt counts 33 (5.89%) exophoric references whereas the second excerpt contains just 11 of the same reference type. Indeed these exophoric ties in both texts reflect the interactive, face-to-face context in which the story is narrated and thereby account for the mode in which the text was constructed. As a matter of fact, the remarkable unbalance of the number of exophoric references in both selected extracts from the same novel though from different page ranges can then be explained by the simple fact that the first excerpt is more dialogically written than the second one. To be more specific, the considerable number of exophoric references in the first excerpt, as can be witnessed from the above statistical analysis, is indicative that the first studied text was produced in a context of immediate face-to-face feedbacks with language accompanying action which highlights the tenor dimension of the excerpt. On the other hand, the fewer number of the same reference type in the second excerpt, which however has a highly extensive reliance on endophoric references, unveils its field and indicates that it is a written reflective text reconstructing an experience. More to that point, as exophoric references are retrievals from the immediate context of situation, their presence at that rate in both selected excerpts in addition to the retrievals from the shared context of culture viz. the homophoric references which are also not trifling at all in both studied texts is indicative of the fact that the studied excerpts are to a large extent context-dependent for their sound understanding. For example the exophoric reference "we" in Obinze's following statement: "Didn't we all go to primary schools that taught the Nigerian curriculum" gets its full meaning only when put in its immediate situational context. As a matter of fact Obinze, in the above statement, has used the exophoric reference "we" to refer to himself, Mrs. Akin-Cole, Mrs. Adamma and his wife Kosi who were discussing about the right school to send the little daugter Butchi to. Looking more deeply into that immediate situational context of the exophoric reference pinpointed above, one understands that beyond the personae of the excerpt it really refers immediately to, it is also used to refer to all the native Nigerians who have grown up in their country and have attended the same local schools being rejected today for reasons that seem not convincing for him at all. Obinze's question implies that the Nigerian curriculum is not bad in itself because that was the curriculum they were all taught and have however all succeeded in life. So why should Mrs. Akin-Cole and Adamma, just like several other Africans think that the French and the British curricula are the best and are the only recommendable ones that would ensure the wholeness of their children? Obinze may be right to view things the way he does but what he has forgotten that the female writer Adichie is implicitly calling attention to, is that the time which he is referring back to which fuels his stand is really a bygone age that actually has nothing to do with the present time in the twenty first century where things have largely evolved and have beaten the realities of the past. Just like Obinze, many Africans in general and African leaders in particular are still inclined to the past to the point of losing sight of the present and the future which, however, matter much more for the development of their countries and, by extension, of their continent. Such is certainly the message being conveyed here by Adichie to her readership.
In other respects, drawing upon the depiction of the events as presented above, Adichie is, without doubt, calling Africans' attention to the fact that Africa would never get developed if Africans should remain dependent on foreign customs, culture, traditions and technologies. Indeed no nation worldwide can get to their full development without putting their civilization before other nations' one. How can Africans get developed if they have no solid educational systems? Africans should join hands and get up like one person in perfect unity to establish successful educational systems with modern challenging curricula and high technologies where teachers and lecturers are very well trained for their jobs for the development of their dear continent. It is true that with the current financial crises which can possibly result into social crises in the long run if care is not taken, caused by the covid-19 pandemic, and all the good lessons learnt from it nowadays on the one hand, added to the worldwide globalization process still in progress thereby all continents of the world are bound to collaboration on the other, Africans won't be able to wave aside other nations but they should not as well depend on them for their basic needs.
The data obtained after analysis has revealed that the locational references of both types have been recorded in both studied excerpts. A striking common linguistic feature to both excerpts is that the locational references to nearby time or space largely outnumber those to distant time or space. Such distribution of these linguistic patterns indicates that Adichie, in the studied excerpts, has written about topical social issues that deserve careful attention, concrete and beneficial actions to get Africans, their families as well as their continent, by and large, out of the rut for better and brighter living conditions and a sustainable development. Conversely, the locational references to distant time or space, as used in the studied excerpts, are a foray into the past to learn from it for serious actions to be taken in the present to foster a brighter future.

Conclusion
This article has explored the cohesive resource of reference in two excerpts culled from Adichie's novel entitled Americanah to scrutinize how she has both encoded and kept track of her different participants in the studied texts to allow her readers to follow her and decode her full messages constructed around them as the plots they are involved in get unfolds. The paper has appealed to the mixed quantitative and qualitative research methodology. Via the quantitative method, statistics of the data collected from both studied excerpts after analyses, have been summarized, organized and presented in an informative way in a recap statistical table for the overall display of the excerpts linguistic patterns with a view to the interpretation that ensued following the qualitative method. The article has, at the level of the interpretation of the findings, arrived at very impressive results. Among several other findings available under the interpretation of the findings section, the study has allowed to validate the hypothesis that Adichie, in the studied excerpts, has made use of different types of cohesive devices to create texture in her selected texts which makes them exquisite and closely connected pieces. Such a writing technique has made it very easy for her readers to connect pieces of information as the different plots of the story she writes about unfold. It further ensures that her readers guess what the key encoded messages of her writings are, which confirms the second hypothesis that Adichie has encoded deep meanings via the field, tenor and mode of the selected excerpts. More to the point, using so many cohesive ties as she has done, has allowed her texts not only to stick together but also to be highly readable and flow logically. Furthermore, the study has also unveiled, via the anaphoric patterns of both studied excerpts how mismanaged old friendships especially with ex-girlfriends can negatively impact men's currently established households' harmony and happiness. In addition, the study has also revealed that the changes in participants as Obinze's story unfolds correspond to Adichie's narration of the different plots involved in that story. Furthermore, the extensive number of exophoric references in the first excerpt is indicative that it was produced in a context of immediate face-to-face feedbacks with language accompanying action which sheds light on its tenor dimension. On the other hand, the fewer number of the same reference type in the second excerpt, which however has a highly extensive reliance on endophoric references, unveils its field indicating that it is a written reflective text reconstructing, as a result, an experience.

Appendices
The analyses below have been carried out following the discourse-semantics principle of describing texts. As a matter of fact, knowing that the unit of analysis admitted for the discourse-semantics stratum of language by scholars within the framework of systemic Functional Linguistics is text, the keys hereafter have been designed for the description to help highlight distinctively the different types of reference embedded in the selected texts: H: Homophoric reference; X: exophoric reference; A: anaphoric reference; C: cataphoric reference; S: esphoric reference; P: comparative reference; B: Bridging reference; L: locational reference.

Excerpt N°1
As soon as they(C) arrived at Chief's party, Kosi led the way around the room, hugging men and women she (A) barely knew, calling the older ones "ma" and "sir" with exaggerated respect, basking in the attention her (A) face drew but flattening her(A) personality so that her (A) beauty did not threaten. She (A) praised a woman's hair, another's dress, a man's tie. She (A) said "We (X) thank God" often. When one woman asked her (A), in an accusing tone, "What cream do you (A) use on your (A) face? How can one person have this kind of perfect skin?"Kosi laughed graciously and promised to send the woman a text message with details of her (A) skin-care routine.
Obinze had always been struck by how important it(C) was to her (A) to be a wholesomely agreeable person, to have no sharp angles sticking out. On Sundays, she (A) would invite his (A) relatives for pounded yam and onugbu soup and then watch over to make sure everyone was suitably overfed. Uncle, you ( "You(C) look so well, Chief," Kosi said. "Ever young!" "Ah, my(C) dear, I(C) try, I(C) try." Chief jokingly tugged at the satin lapels of his (A) black jacket. He (A) did look well, spare and upright, unlike many of his (A) peers who looked like (P) pregnant men.
"Good evening, Chief." Obinze shook his (A) hand with both hands, bowing slightly. He (A) watched the other men at the party bow, too, clustering around Chief, jostling to out laugh one another when Chief made a joke. The party was more crowded. Obinze looked up and saw Ferdinand, a stocky acquaintance of Chief's who had run for governor in the last elections, had lost, and, as all losing politicians did, had gone to court to challenge the results. Ferdinand had a steely, amoral face; if one examined his (A) hands, the blood of his (A) enemies might be found crusted under his (A) fingernails. Ferdinand's eyes met his (A) and Obinze looked away. He (A) was worried that Ferdinand would come over to talk about the shady land deal he(A)had mentioned the last time they(A) ran into each other, and so he(A) mumbled that he(A) was going to the toilet and slipped away from the group.
At the buffet table, he (A) saw a young man looking with sad disappointment at the cold cuts and pastas. Obinze was drawn to his (A) gaucheness; in the young man's clothes, and in the way that he (A) stood, was an outsiderness he (A) could not shield even if he (A) had wanted to.
"There's another table on the other side with Nigerian food," Obinze told him (A), and the young man looked at him (A) and laughed in gratitude. His (A) name was Yemi and he (A) was a newspaper journalist. Not surprising; pictures from Chief's parties were always splattered in the weekend papers.
Yemi had studied English at university and Obinze asked him(A) what books he(A) liked, keen to talk about something interesting at last, but he(A)soon realized that, for Yemi, a book did not qualify as literature unless it(A) had polysyllabic words and incomprehensible passages.
"The problem is that (A) the novel is too simple, the man does not even use any big words," Yemi said.
It(C) saddened Obinze that Yemi was so poorly educated and did not know that he ( Research Vol. 3, No. 3; He (A) had been uncomfortable, with her (A) overdone fussing, the deference that (A) seeped subtly from her (A) pores. He(A)was, in her(A) eyes, no longer The Zed from secondary school, and the stories of his(A) wealth made her(A) assume he(A) had changed more than he(A) possibly could have. People often told him(A) how humble he(A)was, but they(A) did not mean real humility, it(A) was merely that he(A) did not flaunt his(A) membership in the wealthy club, did not exercise the rights it(A) brought-to be rude, to be inconsiderate, to be greeted rather than to greet-and because so many others like him(A) exercised those(A) rights, his(A) choices were interpreted as humility. He (A) did not boast, either, or speak about the things he (A) owned, which (A) made people assume he (A) owned much more than he (A) did. Even his (A) closest friend, Okwudiba, often told him (A) how humble he (A) was, and it (A) irked him (A) slightly, because he(A) wished Okwudiba would see that to call him(A) humble was to make rudeness normal. Besides, humility had always seemed to him (A) a specious thing, invented for the comfort of others; you(X) were praised for humility by people because you(X) did not make them (A) feel any more lacking than they (A) already did. It(C) was honesty that he (A) valued; he (A) had always wished himself (A) to be truly honest, and always feared that he (A) was not.
In the car on the way home from Chief's party, Kosi said, "Darling, you (A) must be hungry. You (A) ate only that(X) spring roll?" "And suya."

Excerpt N°2
Obinze checked his (A) BlackBerry often, too often, even when he (A) got up at night to go to the toilet, and although he (A) mocked himself (A), he (A) could not stop checking. Four days, four whole days, passed before she (A) replied. This (A) dampened him (A). She (A) was never coy, and she (A) would have ordinarily replied much sooner. She (A) might be busy, he (A) told himself (A), although he (A) knew very well how convenient and unconvincing a reason "busy" was. Or she (A) might have changed and become the kind of woman who waited four whole days so that she (A) would not seem too eager, a thought that (A) dampened him (A) even more. Her (A) e-mail was warm, but too short, telling him (A) she (A) was excited and nervous about leaving her (A) life and moving back home, but there were no specifics. When was she (A) moving back exactly? And what was it(X) that(X) was so difficult to leave behind? He (A)Googled the black American again, hoping perhaps to find a blog post about a breakup, but the blog only had links to academic papers. One of them(A) was on early hip-hop music as political activism-how American, to study hip-hop as a viable subject-and he(A) read it(A) hoping it(A)would be silly, but it(A) was interesting enough for him(A) to read all the way to the end and this(A) soured his(A)stomach. The black American had become, absurdly, a rival. He (A) tried Facebook. Kosi was active on Facebook, she(A) put up photos and kept in touch with people, but he(A) had deleted his(A) account a while ago. He (A) had at first been excited by Facebook, ghosts of old friends suddenly morphing to life with wives and husbands and children, and photos trailed by comments. But he(A) began to be appalled by the air of unreality, the careful manipulation of images to create a parallel life, pictures that people had taken with Facebook in mind, placing in the background the things of which they(A) were proud. Now (L), he (A) reactivated his (A) account to search for Ifemelu, but she (A) did not have a Facebook profile. Perhaps she (A) was as unenchanted with Facebook as he (A)