Samuel Gyasi Obeng / Kofi Agyekum (eds.): Topics in West African Discourse-Pragmatics [PDF]

2022
XII, 278 pp.
4 colour graphs, 3 colour tables

Text language: English

Language use in African communicational contexts is not merely a contest between linguistic and communicative competence. It is a contest of wits, of speaking without saying, of avoiding blame by circumventing the obvious and engaging in obliqueness and implicitness. It involves the use of implicatures, assumptions and entailments, engaging in double-voicedness and double wordedness (to give credence to what is said). Language use in Africa includes performing politeness without looking stupid or insincere, and of expressing feelings of emotions without being seen as emotional.

Indeed, saying that communicative context is important in accomplishing the aforementioned interactional tasks is an understatement, for not only is context the storehouse of, and gateway to communicative and pragmatic competence. It helps to determine who speaks and to whom, where to speak and how to speak, as well as what time to speak and when to give up on words.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: Introduction
Samuel G. Obeng / Kofi Agyekum

CHAPTER 2: Parliamentary culture and language behaviour – A pragma-rhetorical study of unparliamentary language in Ghanaian parliamentary discourse
Kwabena Sarfo Sarfo-Kantankah / Dora Francisca Edu-Buandoh

CHAPTER 3: Compliment responses in Ga, Dangme and Ewe
Rebecca Atchoi Akpanglo-Nartey / Regina Oforiwah Caesar / Evershed Kwasi Amuzu

CHAPTER 4: Place naming in Akan societies – Circumstances and functional motivations
Seth A. Ofori / Samuel G. Obeng

CHAPTER 5: On the pragmatics of periodic updates on COVID-19 pandemic broadcast by president Nana Akuffo-Addo of Ghana
William Dautey / Kofi Agyekum

CHAPTER 6: On the pragmatics of interjections in Yorùbá
Foluso Okebiorun

CHAPTER 7: The pragmatics of Akan proverbs in the media
Bright Amoah / Esther Nana Anima Wiafe-Akenten

CHAPTER 8: Yoruba toponyms in Nigeria
Taiwo Ehineni

CHAPTER 9: African American music, Is it African enough? “Osibisaba” highlife and “folk spirituals” of Africa and Africans in the diaspora
Nana Amoah-Ramey

CHAPTER 10: The ‘text’ in the text – Religious intertextuality in matriculation speeches as a cultural product
Nancy Boahemaa Nkansah / Dora Francisca Edu-Buandoh

CHAPTER 11: Ethnopragmatics and communicative competence in Akan – Traditional and contemporary issues
Kofi Agyekum

CHAPTER 12: Yoruba names – Their meanings within the pragmatic theory of properhood
Taiwo Ehineni

CHAPTER 13: Indexicality in Yorùbá pregnancy taboos
Victor T. Alabi

CHAPTER 14: “Does Negative Politeness Exist in Hausa Social Request?”
Abdulkadir Abubakar Zailani

CHAPTER 15: Language and liberty in Akan juridical discourse – Exemplification from address and reference forms
Samuel Obeng

Under these links you will find publications by the contributors, studies of linguistic pragmatics and descriptions of further West African Kwa languages and cultures: