Postproverbials in Igbo Language

Abstract

This treatise assesses the pragmatic implicature derived during the use of postproverbials in Igbo language and culture. Igbo proverbs have been so much studied that it would certainly be monotonous for a paroemiographer to resume making belated significance of Igbo speculations on the meaning and essence of a proverb. It is a glaring fact that that there is virtually no substantial controversy about the importance of proverbs in culture and the significance of proverbs in Igbo traditional society as a repository and verbal effulgence of wisdom is indeed proverbial. This study relies on Austin’s pragmatic theory of speech acts, conversational implicature and presupposition. The data is drawn from oral interview conducted by the researchers on ten Igbo elders with the aim of unraveling the linguistic idiosyncrasies associated with the connotation of postproverbials as it relates to different contextual usages. The paper will look at the development of this threat to the fixability of Igbo proverbs, the normative rapture and by extension establish the presence of “new” proverbs with new syntactic forms, new meanings and perhaps, new values. The analytic emphasis is based on the type of transformation, the shift in the construction of users. This paper concludes that postproverbiality is situated in the dynamic space of informal speech of a younger and adventurous generation.