Exploring Pragmatic Context in African Oral Literature for National Development in the 21st Century
Keywords:
Language, Context, African Oral Literature, National DevelopmentAbstract
Language use in any speech community is mainly for communication. The purpose of
communication is therefore marked by the choice of medium or tool for communication.
Apart from conveying meaning, language use within a speech community is subjected to the
community’s interactional and transactional norms. Hence, a language user decides what to
say, where to say it, when, how and for what purpose language should be used. As language is
used based on the people involved and the situation that informs its usage, the concept of
context is very germane in this study. The issue of national development in Nigeria cannot be
discussed without considering its situational/contextual use. Therefore, this study examines
the place of context of situation in African Oral Literature as a vital tool for achieving national
development in Nigerian society. The functions of African Oral Literature and its relevance to
national development in Nigeria in the 21st Century are enunciated through selected prose,
drama and poetry of African setting. This study revealed that context as a pragmatic tool is
effective in ascertaining the functions of language in African Oral Literature, and elucidating
the contextual meaning of the message being disseminated through each of the genres used.
It thus recommends that as African Oral Literature is a form of language use in context, it is
suitable for enhancing positive societal change and development, by bringing sanity into the
Nigerian economic, political, educational and communal lives through its satirical, didactic
and pedagogical, entertainment and therapeutic functions. Hence, teachers and learners of
English as a second language and African Oral Literature should endeavour to teach and learn
the content of the subjects according to their context of usage, for a result-oriented language teaching and learning, and positive acquisition of knowledge for national development in the
21st Century
