A Discourse Analysis of Ethnography of Communication among the Igbo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Abstract

Most critical works on Achebe’s novels have often focused on their literariness, undermining the use of language in the texts and their sociolinguistic and cultural significance. Language and the sociocultural speech community in which it is used are intricately interwoven. This fundamentally accounts for the expediency of the acquisition of adequate communicative competence as well as sufficient sociocultural knowledge of the society in which language operates. Such a knowledge is acquired through exposure to studies on ethnography of communication of a speech community of interest. This paper examines ethnography of communication among the Igbo (of Nigeria) in Chinua Achebe’s Thing Fall Apart. The study engages in a discourse analysis of selected relevant speech events in the novel to describe and explicate culture-bound issues that influence and condition speech in Igbo linguistic community as represented in the text. The paper is anchored on Dell Hymes’ communicative competence and ethnography of communication frameworks. Findings emanating from the study revealed that effective language use and what is communicated through it is predominantly a culture-bound phenomenon. This, therefore, makes the present study relevant to readers of Thing Fall Apart, especially the non-Igbo speakers, in that the study would provide them with significant insight on the sociocultural issues that influence language use among the Igbo. The paper, thus, advocates that such readers should take cognizance of those culture-bound linguistic issues analyzed as they do a re-reading of the novel for its better appreciation.