The Role of Pragmatics in Social Cohesion and Nation Building in Africa
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4314/gjl.v10i1.325Keywords:
pragmatics, social-pragmatics, politeness, speech/pragmatics acts, linguistic routines, intercultural communicationAbstract
This paper navigates into some areas covered under pragmatics as one of the newest areas in linguistic studies in African universities. We will discuss the theories and practices paying attention to speech acts, pragmatics Gricean cooperative principles, linguistic routines, (im)politeness and face, and socio-pragmatics. The other areas to be covered include lexical pragmatics, discourse markers, pragmatics and politics; looking at political discourse, pragmatics and the media, pragmatics and pedagogy, and pragmatics and culture with emphasis on ethnopragmatics. Other areas of interest are pragmatics and literature, intercultural communication, health, agriculture, trade, religion, performing arts pragmatics and all forms of speeches and interactional contexts. The method for investigation I purely based on library studies and secondary data from works by African pragmaticists. We have suggested some recommendations for the expansion of teaching, research and publication of pragmatics in Africa.
References
Agyekum, Kofi. 2017. “The Language of Akan herbal drug sellers and advertisers.” Language and Dialogue 7(3): 361-387.
Agyekum, Kofi. 2011. “The ethnopragmatics of “amannebɔ” in Akan. Language and Dialogue 1(2): 243-265.
Agyekum, Kofi. 2010. Ghanaian radio and the Akan language: Unplanned language planning and development. Issues in Political Discourse Analysis 3(2): 141-161.
Agyekum, Kofi. 2004a. “The sociocultural concept of face in Akan communication.” Journal of Pragmatics and Cognition 12(1): 71-92.
Agyekum, Kofi. 2004b. “Invective language in contemporary Ghanaian politics.” Journal of Language and Politics 3(2): 345-375.
Agyekum, Kofi. 2004c. “Aspects of persuasion in Akan communication.” International Journal of Language and Communication 21: 63-96.
Agyekum, Kofi. 2003. “Honorifics and status indexing in Akan communication.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 24(5): 369-385.
Allan, Keith. & Burridge, Kate. 2006. Forbidden words: Taboo and the censoring of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Austin, John L. 1962. How to do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brown, Penelope & Stephene C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bublitz, Wolfram & Neal R. Norrick. 2011. “Introduction: the burgeoning field of pragmatics.” In Foundations of pragmatics, edited by W. Bublitz & N. R. Norrick, 1-22. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter Mouton.
Carlson, Gregory. 2006. “Reference.” In The Handbook of pragmatics edited by Laurence R. Horn & Gregory Ward, 74-96. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Cruse, Alan. 2000. Meaning in language: An Introduction to semantics and pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Crystal, David. 1995. The Cambridge encyclopaedia of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, David. 1991. A Dictionary of linguistics and phonetics (3rd Edition). Massachusetts: Basil Blackwell Cambridge.
Culpeper, Jonathan .2011. Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
Duranti, Alessandro. 2006. “Narrating the political self in a campaign for U.S. Congress.” Language in Society 35: 467-497.
Eades, Diana. 2011. “Language and Law.” In The Cambridge handbook of sociolinguistics, edited by R. Mesthrie, 377-395. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fillmore, Charles. J. 1966. “Deictic categories in semantics of ‘come’.” Foundations of Language 2: 219-27.
Goddard, Cliff. 2006. “Ethnopragmatics: a new paradigm.” In Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context, edited by Cliff Goddard, 1-30. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Goddard, Cliff & Zhengdao Ye. 2015. “Ethnopragmatics.” In The Routledge handbook of language and culture edited by Farzad Sharifian, 66-83. London: Routledge.
Goffman, Erving. 1995. “On face-work: Analysis of ritual elements in social interaction.” In Ben G. Blount (ed.) Language, culture and society. Pp. 222-247. Illinois. Waveland Press.
Grice, Paul. 1975. “Logic and conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics Vol. 3: Speech Acts, edited by Peter Cole Jerry Morgan, 41-58. New York: Academic Press.
Grundy, Peter. 2000. Doing pragmatics. 2nd Edition. London: Arnold Publishers.
Gu, Yueguo. 1990. “Politeness phenomena in Modern Chinese.” Journal of Pragmatics 14: 237-257.
Hanson, R. E. 2005. Mass communication: Living in a media world. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Horn, Laurence, Robert. 2006. “Implicature.” In The Handbook of pragmatics edited by Laurence R. Horn and Gregory Ward, 3-28. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
The Hutchinson Fact finder. 1994. London: Quality Paperback Direct.
Ide, Sachiko. 1989. “Formal forms and discernment: two neglected aspects of linguistic politeness.” Multilingual 8(23): 223-248.
Kasper, Gabriele. 1997. “Linguistic etiquette.” In The handbook of sociolinguistics edited by Floriah Coulmas, 374-385. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Kecskes, Istvan. 2014. Intercultural Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kecskes, Istvan. 2012. “Sociopragmatics and cross-cultural and intercultural studies.” In The Cambridge handbook of pragmatics, edited by K. Allan & K. M. Jaszzolt, 599-616 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman Publishers.
Levinson, Stephen. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Matsumoto, Yo. 1989. “Politeness and conversational universals-observations from Japanese.” Multilingual 8: 207-222.
Matsumoto, Yo. 1988. “Re-examination of the universality of face: politeness phenomena in Japanese.” Journal of Pragmatics 12: 403-26.
Mey, Jacob Louis. 2009a. “Pragmatic acts.” In Concise encyclopedia of pragmatics (2nd Edition) edited by Jacob L. Mey, 743-753. Oxford: Elsevier Ltd.
Mey, Jacob Louis. 2009b. “Pragmatics: Overview.” In Concise encyclopedia of pragmatics (2nd Edition) edited by Jacob L. Mey, 786-797. Oxford: Elsevier Ltd.
Mey Jacob Louis. 2001. Pragmatics: An Introduction. 2nd Edition, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Nianxi, Xia. 2009. “Political slogans and logic.” Diogenes 56 (1): 109-116.
Nida, Eugene A. 1984. Signs, sense and translation. Cape Town: Bible Society of South Africa.
Ofori, Emmanuel Amo. 2015. The use of insults in Ghanaian political discourse: A critical discourse analysis. Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.
Le Page, Robert Brock. 1964. The National language question: Linguistic problems of newly independent states. London: Oxford University Press.
Locher, Miriam A. & Richard J. Watts. 2005. “Politeness theory and relational work.” Journal of Politeness Research 1: 9-33.
Qualter, Terence. H. 1962. Propaganda and psychological warfare. New York. Random House.
Scollon, Ron. & Suzanne Scollon. 2001. “Discourse and intercultural communication.” In The handbook of discourse analysis edited by D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. E. Hamilton, 538-547. Oxford, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Searle, John R. 1976. “A classification of illocutionary acts.” Language and Society 5: 1-23.
Searle, John R. 1969. Speech acts: An Essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sharifian, Farzad. 2015. “Cultural linguistics.” In The Routledge handbook of language and culture edited by Farzad Sharifian, 473-490. London: Routledge.
Spencer-Oatey, Hellen. 2000. “Rapport Management: A Framework for Analysis.” In Culturally speaking: Managing rapport through talk across cultures edited by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11-46. London and New York, NY: Continuum.
Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson. 1995. Relevance: Communication and cognition. 2nd Edition Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Spitulnik, Debra. 2001. “The social circulation of media discourse and the mediation of communities.” In Linguistic anthropology: A Reader edited by A. Duranti, 95-118. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers.
Thompson, Rachel. 2019. Ethnopragmatic perspectives on online political discourse in Ghana: Invective and insults on Ghanaweb. Doctoral dissertation, Griffith University, Australia.
Thornborrow, Jeff. 1999. “Language and the media.” In Language, society and power: An Introduction edited by L. Thomas and Shan Wareing, 49-64. London: Routledge.
Verschueren, Jeff. 1999. Understanding pragmatics. London: Arnold Press.
Yule, George. 2000. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Kofi Agyekum
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The Ghana Journal of Linguistics is published by the Linguistics Association of Ghana, P. O. Box LG 61, Legon, Accra, Ghana.
LAG Email: linguisticsgh@gmail.com. Website: http://www.laghana.org
GJL Email: gjl@laghana.org Website: http://www.laghana.org/gjl
© Linguistics Association of Ghana and individual authors, 2023.
