Exploring Pragmatic Context in African Oral Literature for National Development in the 21st Century

Language use in any speech community is mainly for communication. The purpose ofcommunication 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 thecommunity’s interactional and transactional norms. Hence, a language user decides what tosay, where to say it, when, how and for what purpose language should be used. As language isused based on the people involved and the situation that informs its usage, the concept ofcontext is very germane in this study. The issue of national development in Nigeria cannot bediscussed without considering its situational/contextual use. Therefore, this study examinesthe place of context of situation in African Oral Literature as a vital tool for achieving nationaldevelopment in Nigerian society. The functions of African Oral Literature and its relevance tonational 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 iseffective in ascertaining the functions of language in African Oral Literature, and elucidatingthe 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 issuitable for enhancing positive societal change and development, by bringing sanity into theNigerian economic, political, educational and communal lives through its satirical, didacticand pedagogical, entertainment and therapeutic functions. Hence, teachers and learners ofEnglish as a second language and African Oral Literature should endeavour to teach and learnthe 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 the21st Century