22 research outputs found
Idowu Odebode's Quick Files
No full textThe Quick Files feature was discontinued and it’s files were migrated into this Project on March 11, 2022. The file URL’s will still resolve properly, and the Quick Files logs are available in the Project’s Recent Activity
Idowu Odebode's Quick Files
No full textThe Quick Files feature was discontinued and it’s files were migrated into this Project on March 11, 2022. The file URL’s will still resolve properly, and the Quick Files logs are available in the Project’s Recent Activity
Ethnographic analysis of round characters’ Onomastics in Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman
No full textThis study examines Wole Soyinka‟s Death and the King’s Horseman from an ethnography of communication‟s point of view. The work is designed to break the silence on the dearth of onomastic studies on Soyinka. The playwright infuses his novel with onomastic sensibility such that the names reflect different socio-cultural backgrounds, and, in turn, stress the themes of death and scapegoatism raised in the text. The study further reveals that conversation genre is a major tool which the author has manipulated successfully in exercising his naming power over his characters. In addition, it is clear that informing is the principal illocutionary act underlying all the names. These therefore imply that the playwright is both conversing with and informing his reader/audience through his naming strategies. This is so because there is economy of words in naming and, oftentimes, more is being communicated than said through the few strands of letters woven together as a name. The study finally affirms that names are “identity markers that depend on established convention” (Adams 2009, p. 82) and “whatever difference exists between literature and life can be explained as a difference of the contexts in which naming takes place” (Izevbaye 1981, p. 168).Keywords: Wole Soyinka, horseman, ethnography, onomastics
ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF ROUND CHARACTERS’ ONOMASTICS IN WOLE SOYINKA’S DEATH AND THE KING’S HORSEMAN
No full textThis study examines Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman from an ethnography of communication’s point of view. The work is designed to break the silence on the dearth of onomastic studies on Soyinka. The playwright infuses his novel with onomastic sensibility such that the names reflect different socio-cultural backgrounds, and, in turn, stress the themes of death and scapegoatism raised in the text. The study further reveals that conversation genre is a major tool which the author has manipulated successfully in exercising his naming power over his characters. In addition, it is clear that informing is the principal illocutionary act underlying all the names. These therefore imply that the playwright is both conversing with and informing his reader/audience through his naming strategies. This is so because there is economy of words in naming and, oftentimes, more is being communicated than said through the few strands of letters woven together as a name. The study finally affirms that names are “identity markers that depend on established convention” (Adams 2009, p. 82) and “whatever difference exists between literature and life can be explained as a difference of the contexts in which naming takes place” (Izevbaye 1981, p. 168). Keywords: Wole Soyinka, horseman, ethnography, onomastic
Twins' Naming among the Yoruba Nigerians: A Sociolinguistic Study
No full textTwinning is a common phenomenon among the Yoruba Nigerians. The birth of twins is highly significant because it marks an onomastic revolution (or turn around) in the family. The naming system of such a family changes automatically, because recent names evolve, older ones are either modified or dropped outright, and those that follow use the twins’ names as a reference point. Such (new) names are patterned after the ‘ibeji’ (twins), where ‘ibi’ denotes the act of giving birth and ‘eji’ denotes two. For the twins’ siblings and their parents, the arrival of ibeji is a mark of social deference, hence many families pray to God for twins.La naissance de jumeaux est un phénomène très commun chez les Yorubas du Nigéria. La venue de jumeaux y provoque un effet très significatif puisque cela marque une révolution (ou même un renversement) onomastique dans le système de dénomination familiale. Celui-ci s’en trouve modifié automatiquement, car les noms récents évoluent d’un coup alors que les plus anciens se trouvent changés ou tout simplement abandonnés puis ceux qui suivent en dépendent par référence. Selon le patron ayant cours, ces « nouveaux » noms incorporent le terme ‘ibeji’, soit ‘ibi’ dénotant l’accouchement et ‘eji’ signifiant deux ou paire. Pour la fratrie des jumeaux et leurs parents, l’arrivée d'ibeji constitue une marque de déférence sociale, donc bien des familles prient pour que Dieu leur accorde des jumeaux
Motion and Locution: A Pragma-scientific Study of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and Keye Abiona’s Even Kins Are Guilty
No full textNaming Systems during Yoruba Wars: A Sociolinguistic Study
No full textAbstractThe various intra-tribal conflagrations which consumed the Yoruba empire of Oyo were fundamentally economic and political. Oyo was renowned as an extraordinary exporter of slaves in the eighteenth century, and also as the seat of government for millions of citizens spanning the whole of South Western Nigeria and parts of the Republic of Benin. The revolt of Afonja in Ilorin against Alaafin Aole marked the beginning of the end of the great empire. The different battles fought by the Yoruba led to the emergence of new names in Yoruba lexicon. This paper treats thirteen major Yoruba wars and their onomastic imports.</jats:p
A Socio-pragmatic Study of Characters’ Names in Wole Soyinka’s The Strong Breed
No full textThis study attempts an onomastic analysis of Wole Soyinka’s The Strong Breed from a socio-pragmatic perspective. Six names of the major characters in the text are selected for the study. They are given an in-depth analysis based on Halliday’s (1978) socio-semiotic variables model among others. The study indicates that naming (by Soyinka) transcends the illocutionary act of labeling to bring into play the social indices of occupation, age, geography, ethnicity and religion. Out of five variables examined, religion has the highest frequency. This, therefore, proves the religious/scapegoat theme stressed in the work. The study also indicates that names are meaning potentials and a good understanding of the author’s use of names is a great key that unlocks his perceived difficult text(s)
A Sociolinguistic Study of Fagunwa/Soyinka’s The Forest of a Thousand Daemons
No full textThis study takes a sociolinguistic approach to analyze The Forest of a Thousand Daemons, a translation of the Yoruba text, Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmale (1938) which was authored by Daniel Olorunfemi Fagunwa, the greatest Yoruba novelist and translated by Wole Soyinka, a literary icon cum Nobel laureate. The work is premised on the fact that many literary and linguistic attempts at Fagunwa’s work have failed to benchmark the text with the speech act theory and the VARIES model simultaneously as we have done in this study. Fifteen excerpts from the text served as our data. Each datum is subjected to content and quantitative analyses based on relevant sociolinguistic variables of vocation (occupation), sex, age, religion, geography (ethnicity), age, education and socio-economic status. The data were further dissected according to the speech act theory by Austin (1962) in a bid to ascertain the validity of their illocutionary force(s). The study indicates that social institutions affect language (choice and use) a great deal and language, in turn, performs different illocutionary acts among various heterogeneous social groups in a speech community like the Yoruba, which is replicated in the text.
Writer as Clairvoyant: A Pragmatic-onomastic Study of Soyinka’s The Road and Ibadan’s Socio-political situation in 1999-2009
No full textThis study is designed to validate the claim that Wole Soyinka, the first African Nobel Laureate in Literature, is a clairvoyant. The work is based on events in The Road and socio-political situation in Ibadan (the largest metropolis in West Africa) between 1999 and 2009. Thus, the thrust of the research is to juxtapose the purposively selected character names in Soyinka’s The Road with the actual (nick) names in use in real life. The theoretical framework adopted is relevance theory. The study partly indicated that the playwright uses clipping, coinage, compounding and lexical borrowing as his naming strategies; and partly that the textual names parody certain bearers of such names in the larger society
