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Title CONCEPTUALIZATION OF SPEECH IN ORAL CULTURES: A LINGUO-CULTURAL STUDY OF YORUBA AND PUNJABI PROVERBS

Author(s) Ms. Lubna Akhlaq Khan

Abstract ABSTRACT Thesis Title: Conceptualization of Speech in Oral Cultures: A Linguo-Cultural Study of Yoruba and Punjabi Proverbs Oral and aural communications are the most dynamic processes through which local wisdom is both preserved and transmitted. Reading the proverbs that carry the folk wisdom within a culture and across the cultures is an appropriate way to understand the cultural nuances that develop among certain communities over a long history of social existence. The comparative study of how one culture differs or concords with another as far as the transmittance of historical and folk wisdom is concerned brings forth a deeper understanding of human behavior both at intracultural and intercultural levels. A culture’s proverbs indicate the verbal behavior of a language community which provides an insight into the norms, values, preferences and codes of conduct in that particular culture. The present research is focused on the paremiological corpora of Nigerian (Yoruba) and Pakistani (Punjabi) languages which have been selected for multiple similarities discovered between the respective linguo-cultures, including their orality and traditionality, which in turn informs about other factors, including socio-cultural norms, colonial history, the state of economy as well as religious affiliations. In one culture, speech is encouraged, and in the other, it is relatively discouraged. This trend owes to the universality of interactive goals of speech proverbs, which makes them a rich source of data for cross-linguistic and cross-cultural comparison. The conceptual framework has been adapted from the Linguo-Cultural approach proposed by Petrova (2016, 2019) and the theory of Cultural Scripts (Wierzbicka & Goddard, 2010) for a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic investigation of proverbs. Relevant dictionaries of proverbs have been used to solicit data related to the semantic domain of speech. For contextually relevant and authentic outcomes, cultural informants from both cultures have helped select, identify, and ensure the currency, categorization, back translation, and interpretation of the speech-related proverbs. Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) has been used to explicate the dominant trends emerging from a culturematic analysis from both collections. This Cultural-Scripts based comparison v establishes the respective people’s implicit ‘cultural grammar’ and a sort of shared interpretive background. The study confirmed the hypothesis by Fischer and Yoshida that the population density of a speech community affects the positive or negative attitude towards speech. Punjabi proverbs from a speech community with higher population density delineate an overall image of the preference for silence, restraint, contemplation, and indirectness. While the Nigerian corpus, from a region with lower population density, delineates preferences for speech, clarity, appropriacy, and directness. Silence has been equated with wisdom, success, peace and enhanced performance in the Punjabi corpus. In comparison, a mixed response has been recorded in the Nigerian delta, where silence has been chiefly associated with defeat, undue shyness, apprehension, contemplation, and loss of eloquence. Gender segregation present in the Punjabi culture where feminine discourse is showcased as an unproductive activity also shows its traces in the Nigerian culture, emphasizing women’s unreliability and insincerity. Further research can be done to seek the prospective reasons for these similarities and differences found in the proverbs of these two geographically distant cultures.

Type Thesis/Dissertation PhD

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2021-07-08

Subject English Linguistics

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