ABSTRACT
Language is a potent weapon through which ideas, thoughts,
opinions, messages and information generally are exchanged between
groups of people to ensure inter-personal relationship. It is a symbol
of people‟s identity and a means of identifying people‟s value system.
This is particularly true of proverbs which are generally believed to be
words of wisdom, usually didactic, memorisable and therefore passed
down easily from one generation to another. Proverbs are context
dependent and culture specific. Since proverbs cannot exist outside of
the context of use, pragmatics; the study of contextual meaning, is
adopted as the tool of the study. To understand the prevailing context
of the selected proverbs, the socio-cultural background and orientation
of a group of language users are considered. This implies that culture
occupies a vintage position in the study of proverbs in order to explore
their contextual meaning and didactic significance. However, cultural
diversity of language users, (particularly proverb users) has yet to be
given adequate consideration in researches on proverbs. Therefore, the
thrust of this study is to deploy the use of a linguistic theory for the
analysis of literary texts with the aim of identifying the moral
significance of the selected proverbs. One hundred proverbs from four
works of Ola Rotimi, are analysed using a descriptive research approach
based on modified version of Lawal‟s (1997) pragmatic model. The
findings reveal the need for the primary and secondary levels of
meaning, the existence of direct and indirect illocutionary acts, and
the significance of four context/competence variables out of the six
propounded by Lawal. The findings further affirm Malinowski‟s
distinction between situational context and cultural context as a basis
of meaning explication in pragmatics. In conclusion, the study reveals
that selected proverbs perform certain didactic functions and that the
functions are revealed through a careful exploration of the prevailing
context.
CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction
This chapter is concerned with the background to the study,
statement of the problem, research questions, aim and objectives of the
study, justification for the study, scope of the study, methodology and
organisation of the study. The chapter provides a basis for a proper
understanding of the thesis.
1.2 Background to the Study
Language is an avenue through which cultures can be understood.
Language and social reality are strictly tied together, hence language
is said to be culturally transmitted (Heath, 2003). This implies that
changes in produce change in language because peoples‟ cultural
orientation, attitude, belief, disposition, worldview and social value
among others are reflected in their language (including proverbs).
Proverbs are products of human experiences and mostly culture specific.
They (proverbs) are concise in structure, often known by heart, loaded
with philosophical meaning and passed from one generation to another.
The role of proverbs in societies where discourse is laced with
assorted forms of proverbs for different communicative functions cannot
be over emphasized. Proverb is one of the means through which the
cultural background of a group of people could be known. It reveals a
people‟s historical development, worldview and attitude. Proverb is a
special way by which social behaviour is controlled in order to ensure
mutual intelligibility among the interlocutors. Proverbs provide hard
hitting messages in a profound way rather than in a nasty or
demoralizing manner. They pass very weighty messages in a mild or gentle
way.