Pragmatic Acts in the Conversational Discourses in Ola Rotimi’s Kurunmi

This paper examines the mechanisms of pragmeme in the conversations of characters in Ola Rotimi’s drama text titled Kurunmi. Previous studies on pragmatic acts have explored pragmatic acts in Ahmed Yerima’s text titled Mojagbe, John Kolosa Kargbo’s text titled Let Me Die Alone, and pragmatic acts in Soyinka’s text called Death and the kings Horseman, but not so much is in done on the conversations of characters in Ola Rotimi’s Kunrumi. Therefore, this study examines the pragmatic acts in the conversations of the characters in the text Kurunmi. Thirty (30) Extracts purposively selected from the text serve as primary data of the study. Mey’s (2001) Pragmatic Acts Theory was adopted as theoretical framework of the study while qualitative descriptive and quantitative designs were deployed to analyse data extracted for the study. The result of the analysis reveals that the characters in the text kurunmi deployed pragmatic acts of promising, warning, advising, praying, ordering, inquiring, informing, threatening, and pragmatic acts of opposing in their conversations. Thus, pragmatic acts of praying occurred with a frequency of 5 or 16.67 per cent. Pragmatic acts of promising, ordering, and informing occurred with a frequency of 4 or 13.33 per cent each. Pragmatic acts of warning, inquiring and opposing transpired with a frequency of 3 or 10 per cent each. Pragmatic acts of advising and threatening materialised with a frequency of 2 or 6.67 per cent each. The study concludes that the pragmatic acts deployed in the conversations of the characters enable them to convey what actually occurred before and during the war between the people of Ibadan and the people of Ijaiye, clearly.

Keywords: Pragmatic Acts Kurunmi War Ibadan Ijaiye Ola Rotimi Conversation

Author

• Samaila Yakubu
  Faculty of Humanities,
  Department of English and Literary Studies,
  Federal University Wukari, P M B 1020 Wukari,
  Taraba State, Nigeria
  samaila.yakubu@fuwukari.edu.ng
  +2348034478215