Narratives of identity and sociocultural worldview in song texts of the Ham of Nigeria: A discourse analysis investigation

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation investigates the social and linguistic communicative resources of spoken discourseembedded in the lyrics of the songs produced by members of the Nigerian Ham, the Hyam linguisticheritage community as a form of group, cultural, and identity-related analysis. The study considersHam songs as narratives of world making (Herman 2009: xii) exploring public discourses concernedwith the contestation of values and perceptions that are predictably part of societies in transition fromtraditional rural lifestyles to modern urban daily life. The drift from the rural area to the metropolitan,beside the multicultural nature of the cities, gives rise to encounters and contestations over a broadspectrum of sociocultural belief systems as (new) identities are (re)constructed to make the selfvisible.Essentially, the study focuses on the linguistic (linguistic lexical-semantic and discoursesemantic)expressions in the narratives inherent in the song texts.Theoretically, the study engages a multi-perspective approach which integrates the analyses of (i)narrative, (ii) genre theory, and (iii) appraisal theory. These approaches combined have shown to haveintegral components for the interpretation of Ham songs. Discourse observed as a system of addressand verbal art or stories take place within a sociocultural and historical context (Halliday, Matthiessen2014). Discourse linked with narrative establishes the function of language as a gateway throughwhich society could comprehend the conception and worldviews of the Ham of themselves and theworld around them. This thinking echoes the suggestion of Martin and Rose (2008) that the aim of astory (narrative) is to exemplify how characters struggle with the difficulties and dilemmas of life. Inthis way, the study undertakes to establish how the context songs in Hyam language are engaged inpreserving kinship and morality/ethical consciousness and worldview among the Ham (John &Madaki 2014, 2015, 2016) and the role of narratives in the production of the identity of the Ham(Czarniawska & Gagliardi 2003, Frank 2010)The dissertation employs the notion of 'small stories (Bamberg 2006, Georgakopoulou 2006b) aswell as 'big stories' (Lyotard 1984), to expound on ordinary events of society in addition to grandnarratives. The basis is that narrative reveals a consciousness that people utilise stories in typicalsituations to construct (and perpetuate) a sense of who they are (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou 2008:2, De Fina & Georgakopoulou 2015, Popova 2015). More so, the formation of identity and belonging(Bamberg 2007) is the constituent of this dissertation. Related to this is genre theory engaged tocategorise Ham songs into a recurring structure of patterns and meanings which enact the social lifeof their culture (Martin & Rose 2008). Correspondingly, appraisal theory is utilised as 'a frameworkfor analysing the language of evaluation (Martin & White 2005, White 2009a: 2). To this end, the study is concerned with evaluating the rhetorical configurations and components in the carefullychosen songs to consider their import in understanding the worldview of the Ham.The inspiration for the study stems from the curious observation that in the face of the growingfollowing of Ham songs with persistent communal expressive objectives, there was scarcely anydedicated study which examines the rhetorical features that the singers employ with an orientation tothe theoretical approaches of NARRATIVE, GENRE, and APPRAISAL. I argue, in the dissertation,that these approaches, manifestly, are vital to the understanding of the stories, the configurations, andthe raptures of stories the narrators/texts in the songs take on. Besides, that Hyam remains a spokenlanguage primarily, only in the process of being documented through a Bible translation project, theresearcher'saim, above all, is to seek to enrich a primarily oral language into writing by engagingfamiliarity with the International Phonetic Alphabets. However, the point of departure of the studyis, while most research on songs in Africa is concerned with the question of politics which relates tocontrol of nation-states or of power relations (for example, Mvula 1986, Njogu & Maupeu 2007,Musiyiwa 2013), the stories in Ham songs incline to focus on a society in the fringe, expressing itsdisquiets about origin, validation of culture, support to customs, instruction, esteem or criticism ofconduct, and worldviews (Okpewho 1983: 24, John 2014).

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University