An Analysis of Igala Proverbs in Awo Speech Community of Ankpa, Kogi State
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64137/31078729/IJLLH-V2I1P102Keywords:
Pragmatics, Proverbs, Illocutionary, ConversationalAbstract
The use of language is open to every human who is privileged to acquire the ability to produce meaningful sounds. However, linguists (pragmatists) are saddled with the responsibility of carrying out analysis of human utterances with the aim of discovering the acts performed in the utterances. “An analysis of Igala proverbs in Awo speech community” is a well-researched paper aimed at achieving pragmatic analysis of some selected Igala proverbs collected from the Awo speech community, guided by the following objectives: to identify contextual uses of Igala proverbsand to analyze the contextual meaning of the Igala proverbs. The paper adopted a non-participant instrument to generate its data, complemented with both primary and secondary sources of data collection, through which twenty-five data points were generated and analysed using a descriptive qualitative approach. It anchors on Austin’s Illocutionary Act and Searle's Conversational Implicature theories coded as “pragma IACI”. The findings of the research include the following, among others: the interpretation/meaning of Igala proverbs changes depending on the context in which the proverb is applied. More than one proverb can be used to explain an idea, and an Igala proverb can be used for warning/advice, educating/informing, and recommending that. Further research on pragmatics should be carried out with more concentration on language users’ socio-cultural reality, among other recommendations.
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