A Pragma-Stylistic Approach to Analysing Proverbs: A Review of Some Selected Proverbs in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God
African artworks, to be specific, literature has for quite a long time now demonstrated African tradition and culture. One major African literary tool that has maintained its efficacy in the African cultural heritage is the use of proverbs. Proverbs have been diversely used to perform several fun...
Guardado en:
| Autores principales: | , , |
|---|---|
| Formato: | article |
| Lenguaje: | EN |
| Publicado: |
Noyam Publishers
2021
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.2021281 https://doaj.org/article/8f6498f2679345bc943beaf698e3c917 |
| Etiquetas: |
Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
|
| Sumario: | African artworks, to be specific, literature has for quite a long time now demonstrated
African tradition and culture. One major African literary tool that has maintained
its efficacy in the African cultural heritage is the use of proverbs. Proverbs have
been diversely used to perform several functions in the African traditional setting.
Among such functions are: confirming opinions, warning, showing regrets, doubts,
justifications and many more. This paper seeks to examine some selected proverbs
from Chinua Achebe’s novels – Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. Significantly,
one can conclude that the style of a writer can go a long way in determining the
reception and authenticity of his works. Chinua Achebe has extensively employed
proverbs in his works as a tool for setting out or revealing his characters, themes
and many others. This study is a pragma-stylistic approach to the analysis of
proverbs used by Achebe in the selected novels. The researchers focus primarily on
the style, meaning and function of the proverbs used in the selected texts. A critical
content analysis method is employed for this study to determine the functions of
the proverbs within the context of the novel. This study brings to the fore the very
nature of African proverbs, specifically the Igbo of Nigeria and reveals the various
functions ascribed to these proverbs. This will provide readers with the necessary
knowledge on the very reasons why some proverbs are used and will ignite the
research impetus of some researchers to further investigate other approaches
to proverbs. This study has contributed immensely to the existing literature on
pragma-stylistic studies and the understanding of a pragma-stylistic approach as a
theoretical concept with a unique focus on analysing African proverbs. |
|---|