Ideology, Power and Apostasy in Wole Soyinka's The Trials of Brother Jero

This study interrogated ideology, power, and apostasy in Wole Soyinka’s The Trials of Brother Jero through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis and pragmatics. The research was necessitated by the gap in scholarship, where earlier studies addressed satire, power relations, or pragmatic strategies separately without integrating them to examine how discourse constructs apostasy as a linguistic, ideological, and socio-religious phenomenon. The specific objectives of the study were to investigate ideology, power, and the language of apostasy; explore apostasy, power, and gendered resistance; analyse the discourse of power, apostasy, and the mask of holiness; examine the language of violence, irony, and disillusionment; and evaluate apostasy, ideology, and the corruption of power. A qualitative design was employed, using purposive sampling of dialogues from the play, which were thematically analysed to reveal linguistic patterns and discourse markers. The study found that Jeroboam’s discourse revealed how apostasy is enacted through manipulation of faith and ideology, the silencing of gendered voices, and the masking of materialistic ambitions in spiritual pretence. The study concluded that Soyinka uses satire, irony, and discourse strategies to expose the contradictions of false religiosity and the corruption of power in religious discourse. The study contributed to existing knowledge by linking apostasy directly to discourse strategies of power and ideology, offering both theoretical advancement in African literary and linguistic studies and practical relevance as a cautionary framework for interrogating religious and political rhetoric.