A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF SELECTED ESAN PROVERBS

ABSTRACT

Language is the official means of communication for humans; the need to convey concepts and ideas in different scenarios has resulted in humans creating different forms of language communication. Proverbs is a means of communication in contemporary African society, they are used to communicate very vital messages. This research titled A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF SELECTED ESAN PROVERBS is aimed at examining the linguistic devices used in Esan proverbs, the socio-cultural and moral values expressed in these proverbs and using pragmatics as a linguistic tool to determine the role of context in them. This research employs a qualitative method of data collection which was conducted via oral interview of competent speakers of Esan language, another source of data was a book written by an indigene of Esan culture, OMHONRIAWO P.G.O titled ESAN PROVERBS WITH AN OVERVIEW OF ESAN CULTURE. To account for the sociocultural properties of each proverb The descriptive method of analysis according to Dixon and Aikhenvald (2004) was adopted and J.L Austin's (1959) speech act theory was used to account for the contextual explications of the proverbs. It was discovered that proverbs in Esan language are utterances made in figurative and metaphorical terms to give advise, encouragement, warnings and the likes to people in the society. It is also seen that these proverbs have embedded the culture and world view of the people,thereby making proverbs a means of preservation of cultural heritage.