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The Theory of Implicature in the Analysis of Ossie Onuora

Enekwe‟s Broken Pots

A Project Report

Written and Submitted in Partial Fulfillment for the

Requirements for the Award of a Master of Arts

Degree in English in the Department of English and

Literary Studies

By

Uzo, Cornelia Ngozi

PG/MA/08/48889

Department of English and Literary Studies

Faculty of Arts

University of Nigeria, Nsukka

June, 2012

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Title Page

The Theory of Implicature in the Analysis of Ossie Onuora

Enekwe‟s Broken Pots

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Approval Page

This work has been read and approved as having met the

standard required for the award of Master of Arts (MA)

degree in the Department of English and Literary Studies,

University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

____________________ _______________

Head of Department Date

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Certification

This is to certify that this project is an independent study carried out by Uzo,

Cornelia Ngozi Registration Number, PG/MA/08/48889 of Department of

English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and that this

work has not been presented in part or in full for the award of diploma or

degree in this or any other University.

__________________ __________________

Prof. Sam Onuigbo Rev. Fr. Prof. A.N. Akwanya

Supervisor Head of Department

__________________

External Examiner

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Dedication

To

The memory of Prof. Onuora Ossie Enekwe (1942 – 2010).

- A literary legend

- First generation writer

- An all round scholar – poet, play Wright, actor, theatre scholar and

writer of repute.

May his gentle soul continue to rest in the bosom of our Lord Almighty –

Amen.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am most grateful for the support and encouragement I got from many

people in the course of research and production of this work. My deep gratitude

goes to Prof. O.O. Enekwe (of blessed memory) for his sound academic advices.

To my colleagues and friends Ada Nwodo, Agunwamba C.N., Dr (Mrs) Sylvia

Agu, Dr (Mrs) Aka Joe, Dr (Mrs) Viv. Ibeanu, Dr. Chibuzo Onunkwo and others,

thanks for your advice and encouragement.

I am also indebted to my husband, Dr. N.M. Uzo, for his very strong

support in the course of this study. My children – Uju, Kene, Olly, Nze and

Chukwuemelie – sincerely I am most blessed to be part of you all.

To my supervisor, Professor Sam Onuigbo. In spite of your tight schedule,

you still painstakingly read through my work, making corrections and giving

directions, even without delay. I don‟t know how to thank you for this favour!

Remain blessed. To my lecturers Professors Akwanya, A.N., Opata, D.U. Dr

Ezema, P. and Nwankwo Chidi, I am blessed because you trained me. Thanks a

million!.

Above all, to God Almighty! What could I have done without you? Your

favour located me; your love sustains me; your grace leads me on. I honour you.

Ngozi C. Uzo

Department of English and Literary Studies

University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

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ABSTRACT

The model of transformational grammar which dominated linguistic thinking

many years ago, sees language primarily as a capability of the human mind, and

therefore highlights the formal and cognitive aspects of language. But

transformational grammar has been challenged by various other models,

particularly those which emphasize the social role of language. Halliday‟s

functional model for example sees language as a „social semiotic‟ and so directs

attention particularly to the communicative and socially expressive functions of

language. The same shift of focus has resulted in a different way from the

influence on linguistics of work by „ordinary language‟ philosophers such as Searl

(on speech acts) and Grice (on conversational implicature). These philosophers

believe that in the study of language, there seem to be certain features and

elements that cannot be captured in a strictly linguistic (or grammatical) view on

language. Based on the rich provisions of Grice‟s theory of implicature, it is

chosen and explored by the writer as a reliable analytical model for the

interpretation of Broken Pots. This is because it helps the reader penetrate an

author‟s literary world in order to project what is not said from what is said. What

is said may have no direct relationship with the intended message of the author,

but the ability to impose the socio – cultural and religious imperatives on the

linguistic code, to project the message makes the pragmatic procedure (theory of

implicature) a reliable interpretive model. Broken Pots is an anthology of poems

that spans a period of about ten years (1963 – 1973). It covers a period in Nigerian

history marked by grim political upheavals and societal problems that later

culminated in a thirty months civil war (1967 – 1970) that sent over one million

Nigerians to their early graves. This background/context of the poems has to be

taken into consideration by the reader in order, not only to be able to exfoliate and

comprehend the implied information in the poems but also to appreciate the

aesthetic beauty of the work. When the theory of implicature is applied, the native

sensibilities behind the poems are captured and appreciated but when analyzed just

linguistically most of the implied meanings with certain semantic density are lost.

Meanwhile, the work has been divided into five chapters. The first chapter

contains the introduction and explanation of certain terms relevant to this work.

Chapter two is the review of other works that have been carried out in this area

while chapter three gives the socio-political background of the poems. Chapter

four in three sections analyzes the thirty one poems in Broken Pots using the

implicature procedure, while chapter five summarizes as well as concludes the

whole discourse.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page - - - - - - - - - i

Approval Page - - - - - - - - ii

Certification Page - - - - - - - - iii

Dedication Page - - - - - - - - iv

Acknowledgments - - - - - - - - v

Abstract - - - - - - - - - vi

Table of Contents - - - - - - - - vii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION - - - - - 1

1.1 Background of the Study - - - - - - 1

1.1 What is Pragmatics? - - - - - - - 5

1.2 Statement of Problem - - - - - - 14

1.3 Purpose of the Study - - - - - - 15

1.4 Significance of the Study - - - - - - 15

1.5 Scope and Limitations of the Study - - - - 16

1.6 Research Methodology - - - - - - 16

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW - - - - 17

2.0 Introduction - - - - - - - - 17

2.1 Theoretical Development in Pragmatics - - - - 17

2.2 Empirical Studies - - - - - - - 35

2.3 Summary - - - - - - - - 41

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CHAPTER THREE: SOCIO – POLITICAL BACKGROUND

OF THE POEMS - - - - 42

CHAPTER FOUR: WAR POEMS - - - - - 49

4.0 Introduction - - - - - - - - 49

4.1 Textual Analysis - - - - - - - 50

4.2 Poem to Friends Lost in War - - - - - 72

4.3 Poems of Love and Nostalgia - - - - - 101

CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION - - 116

WORKS CITED - - - - - - - - 119

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Learning theories, educational/applied psycholinguists, language teaching

professionals and policy makers have persistently sought to design and formulate

more effective methods to second language (L2) teaching and learning. Their

attempts have so far given some insights into L2 learning situation and provided

more practical approaches such as English for specific purposes (ESP) and

pragmatics. The teaching of pragmatics, according to Bardovi-Harlig (2003:25)

aims to

facilitate the learners‟ ability to find socially appropriate language for the

situations they encounter. Within second language studies and teaching,

pragmatics encompasses speech acts, conversational structure,

conversational implicature, conversational management, discourse

organization and sociolinguistic aspects of language use, such as choice of

address forms.

All these practical approaches and insights into L2 learning situations improve the

teaching of the language as against the abstract formalized way of language

teaching. Vincent (1973: 219) rightly observed that one of the problems of modern

African poetry teaching in the secondary schools and colleges in Nigeria is that

“for many teachers of poetry, the important facts about any poem do not go

beyond identifying a few metaphors and similes and making some naïve remarks

about musicality and rhymes”. To him, the idea of fixing on just meaning,

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“represents an abstracted facet of the artifact”. The meaning of a poem he

continues, “goes beyond the immediately graspable statement it ostensibly

makes”.

Reports, comments and questions at conferences and seminars indicate that

many teachers are preoccupied with hunting for the type of meaning that has been

criticized above. Quite a few of them have remained daunted in their quest. On the

above issue, Vincent (213) concludes rightly that

It is inappropriate to limit oneself to the lexical interpretation of a word and

to expect straightforward syntax not only because poetry does not operate

that way but also because the syntactic structure of the poem may be an

aspect of its meaning. This is especially so in modern African literature

which uses the English language to express experiences that are specifically

African. The analysis of poetry in purely linguistic terms remain boring and

unrewarding.

Gregory (1978:32) also in line with Vincent believes that „when the linguist has

described the structure of a language and codified its vocabulary, he has not taken

us to the heart of the mystery‟. He equally believes that

Without grammars, lexicons and phonetic descriptions, we should

understand nothing about the systems of languages. But these analyses

inevitably stop short at the point where languages, in serving personal and

social ends, becomes part of the ceaseless flux of human life and activity

for we choose our utterances to fit situations.

It is interesting to note that past scholars, especially those with close links with the

study of society like Boas and Sapir, Malinowski and Firth, have not failed to

remind us of the necessary relationship between the language we use and the

situation within which we use it. In fact, Malinowski (1949) argues that „an

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utterance makes sense only when it is „seen in the context in which it is used‟. His

argument was based on his observation of the way in which the language of the

people of Trobriand Islands fitted into their everyday activities and thus was an

inseparable part of them. Gregory (235) in line with the above idea, wants us to

understand that “language is essentially a social, an inter-organism activity, and

even in the extreme cases when we are talking to ourselves, we still in a sense

have company”. Onuigbo (2003:9) also has this to say, in line with the above issue

that

To work out the intention and purpose of an utterance or text, one is more

concerned with the relationship between „the speaker‟ and „the hearer‟ in a

particular occasion of use than with the grammatical import of the words

and structure of the sentences.

Linguists such as George Lakoff and John Robert (Haj) Rose, who believe that

language should not be used in isolation from the wider framework of human

activity, protested against the syntactic straight jacket of the Chomskyan School of

linguistics. In an article entitled “presupposition and relative well-formedness”,

Lakoff (1971b:3262), for the first time, publicly and in writing, opposed the well-

known Chomskeyan criterion of „well-formedness‟ as the ultimate standard by

which to judge a linguistic production.

In the „Syntax-only‟ linguistic tradition of Chomsky and his followers

observes Lakoff, (3262) “well-formedness plays the role of the decision maker in

questions of linguistic belonging‟. This is the definition, he went on to explain,

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that “assumed implicitly or explicitly invoked - has been the bulwark of the

Chomskyan system since the late 1950‟s”. But Lakoff (3263) points out that

This later notion is a highly relativistic one; it has to do (and a lot to do)

with what speakers know about themselves, about - their conversational

partners (often called interlocutors‟), about the topic of their conversation,

and about its progress.

Scholars also like Quasthoff (1994) Levinson (1983) gave in-depth examples that

show that the context of utterance has to be taken into consideration before

meaning can be finally arrived at. As Quasthoff (1994:730) observed

In the study of language, there seem to be certain features and elements that

cannot be captured in a strictly linguistic (or grammatical) view on

language. When one looks closer at these features and elements, they seem

to be related in some way to the „outer‟ world (what used to be called,

somewhat denigratorily, the extra linguistic) that is, to the world of the

users and their societal conditions.

Onuigbo (2003) sums it up when he asserts that „the grammatical categories will

always serve as frames of reference for handling of events in literature, but there is

always the recursive reference to the environment and context in which the

language is used‟. Proper interpretation of a speakers message is therefore, based

on the context and the possible interaction between the speaker and the hearer, and

of course their mutual knowledge of the world around them.

Going by Brown and Yule (1983:127) therefore “any analytic approach in

linguistics which involves contextual considerations necessarily belongs to that

area of language study called pragmatics”. The very condition of the existence of

pragmatics is the world of users. What people actually „do with words‟ derives

from the title of one of the classic works in the speech act tradition, How to do

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things with words (1962). The title of Austin‟s book contains an important

question, the answer to which is not, of course, that people should form correct

sentences or compose logical utterances but that they communicate with each

other (and themselves) by means of language.

1.1 What is Pragmatics?

Malmkjar (1991:354) defines pragmatics as

The study of the rules and principles which govern language in use, as

opposed to the abstract, idealized rules of, for instance, grammar, and of the

relationships between the abstract systems of language on the one hand, and

language in use on the other.

To Fotion (1995:60), pragmatics “is the study of language which focuses attention

on the users and the context of language rather than on reference, truth or

grammar”. Lycan (1995:24) further explains the above, by saying that

Pragmatics studies the use of language in context and the context-

dependence of various aspects of linguistic interpretation.... (its branches

include the theory of how) one and the same sentence can express different

meanings or propositions from context to context, owing to ambiguity or

indexicality or both... speech act theory, and the theory of conversational

implicature.

Gazdar (1979:16) makes it clearer when he says that “pragmatics is concerned

with those aspects of meaning of utterance which cannot be accounted for by

straight forward reference to truth-conditions of the sentence uttered”. Trask

(1997:174) also agrees with others when he equally defined pragmatics as “that

branch of linguistics which studies those aspects of meaning which derive from

the context of an utterance rather than being intrinsic to the linguistic material

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itself”. In almost all the definitions and explanations of pragmatics above, the

linguist places great emphasis on the users and the context of use.

Context is kernel to pragmatics. According to Quasthoff (731), „context

refers to the relevant elements of the surrounding linguistic or non linguistic

structures in relation to an uttered expression under consideration‟. It is worthy of

note, that the notion of context is often invoked to explain how pragmatics

complements semantics. That is why Bach (1994:14) says that

a sentence‟s linguistic meaning generally does not determine what is said in

its utterance and that the gap between linguistic meaning and what is said is

filled by something called context. The intuitive idea behind this platitude

is that there are different things that a speaker can mean, even when using

his words in a thoroughly literal way (even that he is speaking literally is a

matter of context).

To Bach, what one says in uttering the words can vary. What fixes what one says

cannot be facts about the words alone but must also include facts about the

circumstances in which one is using them. Those facts comprise the context of

utterance. Contextual information can be said to be „anything that the hearer takes

into account to determine (in the sense of ascertain) the speaker‟s communicative

intention‟ (Bach, 1994a).

Apart from contextualized sentence meaning and factors to be considered

under it, Questhoff (731) also says that speaker meaning is also to be considered.

According to him, “speaker meaning focuses on the linguistic contextual and

performance factors that influence the interpretation of messages intended by a

speaker via a given utterance”. The two major factors to be considered here, which

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happen to be basic to pragmatics are Speech Act Theory developed by Austin and

Searle and secondly Grice‟s (1975, 1978) Theory of Conversational Implicature.

Speech Act theory „specifies the object of linguistic description as the act of

speaking rather than as a structural system‟ (Quasthof 1994:732). In speech

analysis says Crystal (1994: 75); we study the effect of utterances on the

behaviour of speaker and hearer, using a threefold distinction. The three fold

distinction include

First, the bare fact that a communicative act takes place: the locutionary act.

Secondly, we look at the act that is performed as a result of the speaker

making an utterance - the cases where „saying = doing; such as betting,

promising, welcoming and warning: these, known as illocutionary acts, are

the core of any theory of speech acts. Thirdly, we look at the particular

effect the speaker‟s utterance has on the listener, who may feel amused,

persuaded, warned etc. as a consequence: the bringing about of such effects

is known as a perlocutionary act.

Kempson (1977:69) explains these acts further with an example

Suppose for example my child is refusing to lie down and go to sleep and I

say to him „I‟ll turn your light off: Now the locutionary act is the utterance

of the sentence I‟ll turn your light off. But I may be intending that utterance

to be interpreted as a threat, and this is my illocutionary act. Quite separate

from either of these is the consequent behaviour by my child that I intend to

follow from my utterance, namely that he be frightened into silence and

sleep.

Crystal (1994:70), concludes by saying that speech acts are successful only if they

satisfy several criteria known as „felicity conditions‟.

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Central to the very conception of a Grician pragmatic explanation is the

notion of conversational implicature. By conversational implicature explains

Fraser (1994:367)

Is meant the principle according to which an utterance, in a concrete

conversational setting, is always understood in accordance with what one

can expect in such a setting. Thus, in a particular situation in solving a

question, an utterance that on the face of it does not make sense can very

well be an adequate answer.

He drives the explanation above home with an example „if speaker A asks speaker

B, „what time is it?‟ it makes perfectly good sense to answer‟ the bus just went by.

„This is so‟ he explained further because

given a particular constellation of contextual factors, including the fact that

there is only one bus a day, and that it passes BS house at 7:45 each

morning; furthermore, that A is aware of this, and that A takes BS answer

in the „cooperative spirit‟ in which it was given as a relevant answer to a

previous question. Conversational implicature therefore, also emphasizes

the capacity of language to project messages which may have no direct

relationship with the formal linguistic value of the words and sentences

used to carry the messages. Onuigbo (7).

Also, the success of a conversation depends not only on what speakers say but on

their whole approach to the interaction. People adapt a cooperative principle when

they communicate. They try to get along with each other by following certain

conversational maxims that underlie the efficient use of language‟ Crystal (1994:

20). These maxims being referred to by Frazer (1994: 13255), are the maxims of

„quantity‟, „quality‟, „relation‟ and „manner‟.

The maxims as explained by Frozer are as follows

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Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current

purpose of the exchanged). Do not make your contribution more

informative than is required.

Quality: Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which

you lack adequate evidence.

Relation: Be relevant

Manner: Avoid obscurity of expression

Avoid ambiguity

Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).

Be orderly.

A speaker might observe all the maxims, as in the following example:

Father: Where are the children?

Mother: They‟re in the garden or in the playroom, I‟m not sure which.

The mother has answered clearly (manner) truthfully (quality), has given just the

right amount of information (quantity), and has directly addressed her husband‟s

goal in asking the question (relation). Frazer concluded by saying that „she has

said precisely what she meant, no more and no less, and has generated no

implicature (that is there is no distinction to be made here between what she says

and what she means).

It is important to note, that on very many occasions people fail to observe

the maxims. Grice calls this „flouting a maxim‟. Most often especially in the

literary scenario, maxims are deliberately flouted, with the deliberate intention of

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generating an implicature. Knowledge of the four maxims allows hearers to draw

inferences about the speakers/writers intentions and implied meaning. The

meaning conveyed by speakers/writers and recovered as a result of the

hearers/readers inferences is known as conversational implicature.

Grice proposed a toolkit, which has been elaborated by cutting (2008: 3) on

the basic factors that should be taken into consideration in the interpretation of

implicatures. Firstly, the usual linguistic meaning of what is said/written has to be

considered. Secondly, the socio-cultural/contextual/background information of the

text has to be considered. All the relevant elements of the writers world has to be

imposed on the written text for a reliable interpretation. Thirdly the application of

the cooperative principle and its attendant maxims, which Grice suggests is the

basis for the flexibility of the message that can be conveyed by the means of a

single sentence, is also applied. Also, the important point about these maxims is

that unlike rules (example grammatical rules) they are often deliberately violated

or flouted. In the literary scenario, the writer implies a function different from the

literal meaning of form.

Also the implicative value of traditional figures of speech, including the

ironic, metaphoric etc should be taken into consideration not just as literary

devices but as ways of enriching implied information.

An analysis of the title poem „Broken Pots‘ (p. 13) taken from the primary

text shows how the theory of pragmatics can be used to analyze a poem.

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‗Broken Pots‘

The heavy bosomed hill

Lies close to our hut

And the winding narrow path

Stumbles into our farm.

Up above where squirrels prance

or the naughty little birds twitter

About my little sister and me

I want to go and see

The king of the animals.

At night when the cold wind

Runs its fingers through our bodies

Like a drunken lover,

We want to press close to our mother

To break off the crawling touch

We always hear, soft and clear,

Like the wail of a lost lamb,

The voice of a virgin

Whose pot of water

Has slipped and crumbled

While its little fountain

Lingers into our farm

Many have cried

And I have heard many varied voices:

Husky ones as people who eat to much corn,

Muted ones like sighs from broken hearts,

And others which because I‟m to young,

I cannot name.

But I know that some

When they wreck their glory

Within the shades of a benign bush

Never cry as when the pot breaks.

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The background of the poems in this collection are “mainly laments in

which the writer expresses, with great sincerity, varying levels of sorrow over the

misery, desolation, waste, apathy, betrayal and alienation which surround him”

Nwankwo (1977: v). Enekwe believes so much in African cultural systems, to him

colonization just brought about the disintegration of our cultural values and

systems.

The poem ‗Broken Pots‘ can be conveniently divided into two parts. In the

first part (ie the first three stanzas), the poet „portrays the rich, lovely, serene,

unsoiled world of Africa, while the remaining part (ie the last three stanzas) is a

lamentation at the loss of that which was once adorable‟ Ngonebu (2008: 81). In

the first line of the first stanza there is a violation of selection restriction rule, in

this way is a clear breach of the maxim of quality and manner since it is not

literally true that an inanimate thing „Hill‟ can be „bossomed‟, which in usage is a

feature of full – fledged womanhood. According to Ngonebu (2008:82)

The poet has attributed this female quality to an inanimate thing the hill. In

using this attribute, the poet wants to attract our attention to the hill. He

wishes to emphasize that the hill is not only huge but also attractive and

imposing, like the figure of a shapely woman. He wants us to see the beauty

in traditional Africa by comparing it to a young girl in her prime.

„Hut‟, „narrow path‟, „farm‟ are other features of rustic life, „which are

characteristic of Africa‟ „squirrels that prance‟, little birds that twitter and „king of

the animals‟ represent a microcosm of the entire animal kingdom for which Africa

is known and admired.

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The third stanza, also in line with the natural landscape shows that the clean

cool wind flows naturally and unobstructed from the hills. In the last three stanzas,

there is a sudden twist in events. Ngonebu explains that

This part about the breaking of the pot is a signifier, which lends itself to

various interpretations/significations. The two verb phrases used to show

this break … „slipped‟ and „crumbled‟ share the semantic features of

destruction, breakage, irreparable loss … further at a broader level, the pot

is a metaphor of wholeness, of serenity and tranquility. By extension, the

breaking of the pot signifies the destruction of the virtues of rustic rural life.

It‟s breaking denotes the chaos and anomaly that result from a society torn

apart from its values …. It also symbolizes the fragmentation which the

whole of the African continent suffered.

In line with the pain is the choice of lexical items in these last three stanzas to

effectively depict a situation of deep seated pain, of losses and damages.

wail …

the voices …

cry

The poet says he had „heard many varied voices‟, these depict the various voices

of other African continents who were equally colonized before or after Nigeria.

husky ones

the muted voices

(others)

The situation is indeed an unhappy one. These lexical items used to depict pain is

to also make you feel the pain he is feeling. With the background of the poems in

mind, we will realize that the extra meaning is there, not because of the semantic

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aspects of the words themselves, but because we share certain contextual

knowledge with the writer or speaker of the text.

1.2 Statement of Problem

Of the three main denominations of imaginative literature - poetry, prose

and drama- poetry has always seemed the most difficult and one that appeals less

to a majority of readers. The reason according to Vincent (218) is because:

Far too many teachers of African poetry were badly educated on how to

teach poetry generally. For many, the important facts about any poem do

not go beyond identifying a few metaphors and similes and making some

naïve remarks about musicality and rhymes. The emphasis on (syntactic)

meaning has bedeviled the appreciation of poetry in more ways than one…

Vincent, went on to explain, that it is inappropriate for one to limit oneself to the

lexical interpretation alone, and expect „straight forward syntax to yield the total

meaning of a poem‟. “The syntactic structure of the poem, is just an aspect of its

meaning, What fixes what one says cannot be facts about the words alone but also

facts about the circumstances in which one is using them” (Bach, 1994).

Proper interpretation of any poem can best be done when the context is

brought into focus and that is what the theory of pragmatics seeks to do. It looks at

the formal features of language and the relationship between these features and the

context of situation. Based on the above reasons, this research, wishes to explore

the theory of pragmatics in poetry, using the text Broken Pots by Ossie Onuora

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Enekwe since this work has not been subjected to such analytical framework that

provides great insight into the author‟s message.

1.3 Purpose of the Study

The main purpose of this study is to explore the theory of pragmatics as a

reliable analytical model for the interpretation of Enekwe‟s Broken Pots.

It is also the objective of this research to enlighten trainee teachers and

students of English literature, especially in poetry to shift their emphasis from a

purely linguistic description of poetry to embracing the provisions of pragmatics

as an adequate framework for the interpretation of poems.

1.4 Significance of the Study

The application of pragmatics as an interpretative tool for English literature

teaching in secondary schools in Nigeria has not been traditionally addressed in

language teaching curricula. It is important to note that pragmatics is taught in

classrooms in the United States. According to Boardovi-Harlig (2001: 13)

Teaching pragmatics explores the teaching of pragmatics through lessons

and activities by teachers of English as a second and foreign language....

The teaching of pragmatics aims to facilitate the learners‟ ability to find

socially appropriate language for the situations they encounter.

This pragmatic exploration of Broken Pots will provide novel insight into the

teaching of poetry in secondary schools in Nigeria and will demonstrate that a

purely linguistic interpretation of poetry alone is inadequate. With this theoretical

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approach in poetry, scholars can easily apply the same principles in the analysis of

secondary school drama and novel.

1.5 Scope and limitations of the Study

Enekwe has thirty-one poems in his collection Broken Pots. As the title

suggests, a common thread runs through all the poems. According to Nwankwo

(1971:v)

they are mainly laments in which the writer expresses with great sincerity,

varying levels of sorrow, over the mystery, desolation, waste, apathy,

betrayal and alienation which surrounds him.

This volume, whose unifying ethos is the sense of waste is powerfully articulated

in all the poems. And because of this unifying thread, I wish to analyze all the

poems in order not to break this thread. The two major factors which are basic to

all research in pragmatics are the speech act theory developed by Austin and Searl

and Grice‟s (1975, 1978) Theory of Conversational Implicature. The researcher

will use the theory of conversational implicature as a preferred interpretive model

since the two approaches cannot be used in the same analysis.

1.6 Research Methodology

Conversational implicature emphasizes the capacity of language to project

messages which may have no direct relationship with the formal linguistic value of

the words and sentences used to carry the message. The writer will apply the

principle of implicature as a new standard of relevance in the interpretation of

26

Enekwe‟s text Broken Pots. This, the writer wishes to explore through library

research and the resources of relevant literature.

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CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 Introduction

The review of literature related to this study centres on the following areas

1. Theoretical developments in pragmatics

2. Empirical studies that explore research work issuing from the theories of

pragmatics

3. Summary.

2.1 Theoretical Development in Pragmatics

We shall look at key theoretical issues in the development of pragmatics as

a means of providing a suitable framework for our study. For this purpose

therefore, the following issues are examined:

1. Speech acts in pragmatics.

2. Conversational implicature in pragmatics.

The literature in these areas is discussed in such a way that we will have a

clear view of the sequence of development of the issues under discussion.

2.1.1 Speech Acts

Pragmatics is „the study of linguistic acts and the contexts in which they are

performed‟ Stalnakar, (1972:14). Pragmatics deals with utterances and specific

events, the intentional acts of speakers at given times and places. Different

theorists have focused on different properties of utterances. To discuss them,

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Korta et al (2006:1) made a helpful distinction between „near-side-pragmatics‟ and

„far-side pragmatics‟ as follows

Near-side pragmatics is concerned with the nature of certain facts that are

relevant to determining what is said, far-side pragmatics is focused on what

happens beyond saying: what speech acts are performed in or - by saying

what is said, or what implicatures are generated by saying what is said.

Korta et al (2006:2) provides further, points that make this distinction clearer by

saying that

Near-side pragmatics includes, but is not limited to resolution of ambiguity

and vagueness, the reference of proper names, indexical and demonstratives

and anaphors, and at least some issues involving presupposition. In all of

these cases, facts about the utterances, beyond the expressions used and

their meanings are needed. On the other hand, far-side pragmatics deals

with what we do with language, beyond what we (literally) say.... Its up to

pragmatics to explain the information one conveys, and the actions one

performs, in or by saying something.

My focus will be on the traditions in pragmatics inaugurated by J.L Austin and

H.P Grice. These philosophers were interested in the area of pragmatics we call

beyond saying. Campsall (2001:2) wants us to know that pragmatics is not just

interested in utterances but is also “a way of investigating how sense can be made

of certain texts even when, from a semantic viewpoint, the text seems to be either

incomplete or have a different meaning to what is really intended”. He drives this

point home with an example:

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consider a sign seen in a children‟s wear shop window: “Babysale-lots of

bargains”. We know without asking that these are no babies for sale- that

what is for sale are items used for babies.

He goes on to explain that

Pragmatics allows us to investigate how this meaning beyond the words can

be understood without ambiguity. The extra meaning is there, not because

of the semantic aspects of the words themselves, but because we share

certain contextual knowledge with the writer or speaker of the text.

To support the idea that there are other aspects of meaning which are not derived

solely from the meanings of the words used in phrases and sentences, Yule

(1996:127) gave an example

A: I have a fourteen year old son

B: Well that‟s all right

A: I also have a dog

B: Oh I‟m sorry

Harvey Sacks (1992).

In making sense of the quotation above, says Yule (127), “It may help to

know that A is trying to rent an apartment from B. Yule further observes that

„when we read or hear pieces of language, we normally try to understand not only

what the words mean, but what the writer or speaker of these words intended to

convey”. Speaking in the same vein, Campsall (2001:2) opines that

a simplified way of thinking about pragmatics is to recognize for example,

that language needs to be kept interesting - a speaker or writer does not

want to bore a listener or reader, for example, by being over-long or

tedious. So humans strive to find linguistic means to make a text, perhaps,

shorter, more interesting, more relevant, more purposeful or more personal,

pragmatics allows this.

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Basic to all research in pragmatics, is first the Natural language philosophy or

Speech Act Theory developed by John Langshaw Austin (b. 1911 - d. 1960) and

his student John R. Searle and secondly Grice‟s (1975, 1978), Theory of

Conversational Implicature. They „were studying actual linguistic usage,

highlighting in descriptive terms the complexity and subtlety of meanings and the

variety of forms of verbal communication‟ Sperber (1986/95).

At this point, it is worthy to note that much of the semantic work done by

philosophers of language during the sixties and early seventies rested upon the

„truth- functional‟ definitions of semantics. Mey (2001: 190) observes that:

philosophers working in the truth-functional tradition restrict themselves to

„propositions‟ representing one particular class of sentences, the so-called

declaratives, which in order to be true or false, must contain some testable

proposition.

If someone for example tells you that „it‟s cold outside‟ says Mey (193), „we can

go outside, if we wish, and test the truth or falsity of the „declaration‟. On the

other hand, Mey (193) explains further „if I say to somebody happy birthday‟,

I can only talk about the truth of my feeling, or about the truth of the fact

that I actually did pronounce those words, but not about the truth -„ of this,

or any other wish (e.g., „Good luck‟ „Congratulations‟, „well done‟ and so

on). The reason is that wishes are not propositions: they are „words with

which to do things‟, to paraphrase Austin. In brief, they are speech acts.

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The basic flaw in many linguistic theories before pragmatics according to Mey

(93) is that „they do not pay attention to language as an activity which produces

speech acts‟, defined by Austin (1962) „as the actions performed in saying

something‟ and by Searle (1969) as „the basic or minimal unit of linguistic

communication‟. Interest in speech acts „stems directly from the work of J.L.

Austin and in particular from the William James lectures‟ which he delivered at

Harvard in 1955, published posthumously as How to Do Things With Words in

1962 (revised 1975). In this his engaging monograph, Onuigbo (29) observes that

Austin challenged and successfully debunked the logical positivist doctrine

of verifiability of language such that unless a sentence is verifiable in terms

of its truth or falsity, that sentence is meaningless. In the alternative, he

established the fact that language could be used not only to make

statements and assertions about the way the word is but also to do things.

To perform actions and to bring about some changes in the way the world

is.

The conditions necessary for the success of a speech act according to Mey (96)

include the following:

A(i) There must be a conventional procedure having a conventional effect which

include the uttering of certain words by certain people in certain

circumstances.

(ii) There must be the right people and circumstances for the procedure

B(i) The procedure must be executed correctly

(ii) and completely

C(i) If the procedure requires participants to have particular thoughts or

feelings; then they must have it.

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(ii) If the procedure requires participants to perform particular acts then they

must, at the time intended to perform these acts and they must subsequently

perform them.

If all the relevant felicity conditions are satisfied for a given illocutionary

act, the act is described as „happy‟ or „felicitous‟.

Austin let the distinction between constative and perfomative utterances „be

substituted by a three-way contrast among the kinds of acts that are performed

when language is put to use, namely the distinction between locutionary,

illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, all of which are characteristic of most

utterances, including standard examples of both “performatives and constatives”

Horn and Ward (2008:54).

Austin focused mainly on the illocutionary act which occupies the middle

ground. “The ground now considered the territory of pragmatics of meaning in

context” Leech and Thomas (1990: 176). It is on the illocutionary act maintained

Leech and Thomas (179) that

We might find the „force of a statement and demonstrate its performance

nature. For example to say „Don‟t run with scissors‟ has the force of a

warning when spoken in a certain context. This utterance L can be stated in

an explicitly performative way, e.g. “I warn you, don‟t - run with scissors”.

This statement is neither true nor false. Instead, it creates a warning. By

hearing the statement, and understanding it as a warning, the auditor is

warned.

Austin went on to explain „that once we realize that what we have to study

is not the sentence but the issuing of an utterance in a speech situation, there can

no longer be a possibility of not seeing that stating is performing an act. This

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conclusion stated his belief that studying words or sentences (locutionary acts)

outside of a social context tells us little about communication (illocutionary acts)

or its effect on an audience (perlocutionary acts).‟

At the time of his untimely death, Austin‟s work on speech Act theory was

far from complete. His main work How to Do Things with Words, was published

post humously based on his lecture notes.

Conversational Implicature

The theory of implicature is closely associated with H.P. Grice who

attempted to face up to the problem of how meaning in ordinary human discourse

differs from meaning in the precise but limited truth - conditional sense... Leech

(1990: 179).

Grice was interested in explaining the difference between what is said and

what is meant. „What is said‟ explained Grice, is what the words mean at their face

value and can often be explained in truth-conditional terms. „What is meant‟ is the

effect that the speaker intends to produce on the addressee by virtue of the

addressee‟s recognition of this intention‟ Leech (179).

Grice, through his series of lectures at Howard University in 1967, became

„best known in the philosophy of language for his theory of implicatures, and also

for provision of an alternative to the Locke-Saussure model of communication as

coding and decoding of thoughts‟ (2006:24). Grice carefully outlined an approach

to what he termed conversational implicature, which according to Moore

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(2001:10), is “how hearers manage to work out the complete message when

speakers mean more than they say”. Moore (10) gave concrete example of what

Grice meant by conversational implicature with the utterance: “Have you got any

cash on you?‟

What the speaker really wants the hearer to understand as the meaning of the

utterance according to Moore (10) is:

Can you lend me some money? I don‟t have much on me”.

Let us also consider Grice‟s initial example given by Korta et al (2006:6):

A and B are talking about a mutual friend, C, who is now working in a

bank. A asks B how C is getting on in his job, and B replied; oh quite well,

I think, he likes his colleagues and he hasn‟t been to prison yet (Grice

1967a 1989: 24).

What did B say by uttering “he hasn‟t been to prison yet?” asks Grice.

„Roughly all that was literally said of C”, explained Grice:

Was that he hasn‟t been to prison up to the time of utterance.... But

normally, B would have implicated more than this‟ that C is the sort of

person likely to yield to the temptation provided by his occupation.

To explain conservational implicature further, Mey (2000: 46) lets us know that:

Conversational implicature concerns the way we understand an utterance in

conversation in accordance with what we expert to hear. Thus, if we ask a

question, a response which on the face of it doesn‟t make sense can very

well be an adequate answer. For instance, if a person asks me: „what time is

it? It makes perfectly good sense to answer: the bus just went by in a

particular context of conversation. This context should include the fact that

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there is only one bus a day, that it passes by our house at 7:45 am each

morning, and further more that my interlocutor is aware of this and takes

my answer in the spirit in which it was given, viz, as a hopefully relevant

answer.

From the examples stated above, we will agree with Moore (10) that:

Conversational implicature is a message that is not found in the plain sense of the

sentence. The speaker implies it, the hearer is able to infer (work out, read

between the lines this message in the utterance, by appealing to the rules

governing successful conversational interaction.

Looking at the very first example for instance, Grice proposed that

implicatures like the second sentence can be calculated from the first by

understanding three things - the usual linguistic meaning of what is said,

contextual information (shared or general knowledge), and the assumption that the

speaker is obeying what Grice calls the cooperative principle. The second

foundational idea as explained by Sperber (2009:3) is that

In inferring the speakers meaning, the hearer is guided by the expectation

that utterances should meet some specific standards. The standards Grice

proposed were based on the assumption that conversation is a rational,

cooperative activity.

In formulating their utterances, speakers are expected to follow the governing

dictum... the cooperative principle: „make your conversational contribution such as

is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of

the talk exchange” (Grice [1967] 1989:26). „This general principle‟, explained

Horn (2008:6) „is instantiated by general maxims of conversation governing

rational interchange (1989:36-7)

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Quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true

1. Do not say what you believe to be false

2. Do not say that for which you lack evidence

Quantity:

1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current

purposes of the exchange)

2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

Relation: Be relevant

Manner: Be perspicuous

1. Avoid obscurity of expression

2. Aid ambiguity

3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity)

4. Be orderly

5. Frame whatever you say in the form most suitable for any reply that

would be regarded as appropriate; or facilitate in your form of

expression the appropriate reply (added by Grice 198 1/1989, 273).

Neo-Griceans such as Atlas (2005), Horn (2000, 2004, 2005) and Levinson

(1983, 1989, 2000) stay relatively close to Grice‟s maxims. For instance, Levinson

(2000) proposes the following principles, based on Grice‟s quantity and manner

maxims (and given here in abridged form):

Q – Principle (Levinson 2000:76)

Do not provide a statement that is informationally weaker than your

knowledge of the world allows.

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I – Principle (Levinson, 2000:114)

Produce the minimal linguistic information sufficient to achieve your

communicational ends.

M – Principle (Levinson 2000136)

Indicate an abnormal, non-stereotypical situation by using marked

expressions that contrast with those you would use to describe the

corresponding normal, stereotypical situations.

The important point about these conversational maxims says Leech (198

1:295) is that

Unlike rules (e.g. grammatical rules) they are often violated... sometimes

the violations maybe clandestine as when someone tells a lie and is not

detected by the hearer, but more important, the maxims are also broken

ostentatiously, so that it is obvious to all of the participants in the

conversation. When this happens, the listener perceives the difference

between what the speaker says and what he means by what he says, the

particular meaning deduced from the later being the implicature.

In the Gricean model, says Horn (3) „the bridge from what is said (the literal

content of the uttered sentence, determined by its grammatical structure with the

reference of indexical resolved) to what is communicated is built through

implicature. A participant in a talk exchange says Malmkjar (356), may fail to

fulfill a maxim in a number of ways:

1. She/he may violate it, in which case s/he will be likely to mislead

2. S/he may opt out of observing the principle by saying things like “don‟t

want to talk about it”.

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3. There may be a conflict of maxims: you cannot be as informative as is

required if you do not have adequate evidence.

4. S/he may blatantly flout a maxim

Kempson (1977:69) says that „it is the flouting of these conventions which

Grice suggests is the basis for the flexibility of the message that can be conveyed

by the means of a single sentence”. Thomas (1994:754) lets us know equally that

“a „flout‟ occurs when a speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim at the level of

what is said, with the deliberate intention of generating an implicature”.

There are many examples of flouts of each of the maxims. A speaker might

observe all the maxims, as in the following example given by Thomas (754).

Father: Where are the children?

Mother: They are either in the garden or in the playroom;

I‟m not sure which

The mother has answered clearly (manner), truthfully (quality), has given

just the right amount of information (quantity), and has directly addressed her

husband‟s goals in asking the question (relation). She has said precisely what she

meant, no more and no less, and has generated no implicature (that is, there is no

distinction to be made here between what she says and what she means).

Grice in his writings, discussed the possibilities and the very many

occasions when people fail to observe the maxims, “but the situations which

chiefly interested him”, Thomas (754) says

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Were those in which a speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim not with

any intention of deceiving or misleading, but because the speaker wishes to

prompt the hearer to look for a meaning which is different from or in

addition to, the expressed meaning. This additional meaning he called

conversational implicature:

Let us now look at examples of maxims being flouted. The following example

given by Thomas (755) illustrates a flout of the maxim of manner. According to

him, it occurred during a radio interview with an unnamed official from the United

States Embassy in Portau-Prince,Haiti:

Interviewer: Did the United States Government play any part in Duvaliers

departure? Did they, for example, actively encourage him to leave?

Official: I would not try to steer you away from that conclusion.

Thomas explained this further by saying that

The official could simply have replied „Yes”. Her actual responses is

extremely long winded and convoluted, and it is obviously no accident, nor

through any inability to speak clearly, that she has failed to observe the

maxim of manner. There is, however, no reason to believe that the official

is being deliberately unhelpful (she could, after all, have simply refused to

answer at all, or said: no comment).... The official‟s flouting of the maxim

of manner is occasioned by the desire to claim credit for what she sees as a

desirable outcome, while at the same time avoiding putting on record the

fact that her government has intervened in the affairs of another country.

Those who flout the maxim of manner, observes Cutting (2008:3 8), appearing to

be obscure, are often trying to exclude a third party. Thus if a husband says to a

wife: „I was thinking of going out to get some of that funny white stuff for

somebody‟, he speaks in an ambiguous way, because he is avoiding saying „ice-

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cream‟ and „Michelle‟, so that his little daughter does not become excited and ask

for the ice-cream before her meal”.

Leech (1983:80) point out that the C.P. in itself cannot explain why people

are often so indirect in conveying what they mean. „It is for this reason he explains

„that the Politeness Principles can be seen not just as another principle to be added

to the CP, but as a necessary complement....” Leech (80) gives two examples were

the PP rescues the CP.

1. A: We‟ll all miss Bill and Agatha, won‟t we?

B: We‟ll all miss Bill

2. P Someone‟s eaten the icing off the cake

C: It wasn‟t me.

In his explanation of [1] Leech says that

B apparently fails to observe the maxim of quantity: when A asks B to

confirm A‟S opinion, B merely confirms part of it, and pointedly

ignores the rest. From this we derive an implicature: „S is of the opinion

that we will not all miss Agatha‟.

Leech then asks „on what grounds is this implicature arrived at? His answer is:

Not solely on the basis of the CP, for B could have added „...but not

Agatha‟ without being untruthful, irrelevant, or unclear. Our conclusion is

that B could have been more informative, but only at the cost of being more

impolite to a third party. „that B therefore suppressed the desired

information in order to uphold the PP.

Looking at [2], typically an exchange between parent P and child C, Leech

(84) observes that „there is an apparent irrelevance in C‟S reply. Leech‟s reason is

that

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C seems to react as if he needed to exonerate himself from the evil deed in

question. C‟S denial is virtually predictable in such a situation as if C were

being directly accused of the crime.., suppose P is not sure who is the

culprit but suspects that it is C. then a small step of politeness on P‟S part

would be to withhold a direct accusation, and instead to make a less

informative, but undoubtedly true assertion, substituting an impersonal

pronoun someone for „the second-person - pronoun you. Thus, P‟S remark

in [2] is interpreted as an indirect accusation: when C hears this assertion, C

responds to it as having implicated that C may well be guilty, denying an

offence which has not been overtly imputed. What this suggests then, is that

the apparent irrelevance of C‟S reply is due to an implicature of P‟S

utterance. C responds to that implicature, the indirectness of which is

motivated by politeness, rather than to what is actually said.

Leech (1990) shows how differing adherences to the cooperative and Politeness

Principles help to delineate characterization in Shaw‟s Your Never Can Tell.

A good example of the relevance maxim being broken, is the scene in

Macbeth, where Macbeth returns to his wife immediately after he has killed

Duncan as cited by Leech and short (1994:951):

Macbeth: listening to their fear I could not say „Amen‟ when they did say

„God bless us‟.

Lady Macbeth: Consider it not so deeply.

Macbeth: But wherefore could not I pronounce „Amen?‟ I had

most need of blessing and „Amen‟.

Lady Macbeth: These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so it

will make us mad.

Macbeth: Me thought I heard a voice cry „sleep no more‟!

Macbeth doth murder sleep....”

(II, ii, 28-35).

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Lady Macbeth as can be seen explains Leech, „tries throughout in her

attempt to get him under control, to relate to what Macbeth says, but Macbeth‟s

utterances are never properly relevant to his wife‟s connecting, instead with his

own previous utterance”. This helps us to see that Macbeth is unable to cope with

the enormity of his actions.

„If speakers flout the maxim of relation‟, says Cutting (37), „they expect

that the hearers will be able to imagine what the utterance did not say and make

the connection between their utterance and the preceding one(s). in the following

exchange given by Cutting (35):

A: there is somebody at the door

B: I‟m in the bath

„B expects A to understand that his present location is relevant to her

comment that there is someone at the door, and that he is in the bath‟.

Another apt extract from Leech (1990:182) as an example of the maxim of

relation being broken is shown below:

Female Guest: Has the doctor been?

Basil Faulty: What can I get you to drink?

Female Guest: Basil has the doctor been?

Basil Faulty: Nuts!

[implicature: Basil does not want to answer the question]

Leech (1990: 184) also shows that „implicit meanings of irony or of

metaphorical interpretation can be explained at least in part by reference to the CP:

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Giving an example, he says that „at its face value interpreting the example (taken

from a „Peanuts‟ cartoon breaks the maxim of quality; literally speaking older

siblings (of whatever sex) are not coarse grass

Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life. The covert interpretation

“Big sisters are unpleasant and have a tendency to take over‟ depends on

the assumption that what is intended is related to the face-value meaning,

but is also relevant, truthful and informative.

Another way of flouting the maxim of quality is by exaggerating as the hyperbole

„I could eat a horse‟, or „I‟m starving‟, „which are well established exaggerating

expressions‟, says Cutting (2008:36) she concludes by saying that:

no speaker would expect their hearer to say, „what, you could eat a whole

horse?‟ or „I don‟t think you are dying of hunger-you don‟t even look thin‟.

Hearers would be expected to know that the speaker simply meant that they

were very hungry. Hyperbole is often at the basis of humour.

Similarly, a speaker can flout the maxim of quality by using a metaphor, as in „my

house is a refrigerator in January‟, or „don‟t be such a wet blanket – we just want

to have fun‟ Cutting (36). Cutting makes us to understand that:

Hearers would understand that the house was very cold indeed, and the

other person is trying to reduce other people‟s enjoyment. Similarly we all

know how to interpret the meaning behind the words „love‟s a disease but

curable‟ from Crewe Train (Macaulay, 926) and religion is the Opium of

the people‟ (Marx, 1844).

Cutting also adds, „that conventional euphemisms can also be put in this category:

Examples given by her include such utterances people make by saying „I‟m going

to wash my hands‟ meaning „I‟m going to urinate‟, „she‟s got a bun in the oven‟

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meaning „she‟s pregnant‟, or „He kicked the bucket‟ meaning „He died‟. The

„implied sense of the words‟ observed Cuttings, „is so well-established that the

expression can only mean one thing”.

Mey (l994:327) talks more on metaphors by saying that

Metaphors express a way of conceptualizing, of seeing and understanding

one‟s surroundings. In other words, metaphors contribute to one‟s mental

model of the world. Because the metaphors of a language community

remain more or less stable across historical stages and dialectal differences,

they are of prime importance in securing the continuity and continued

understanding of language and culture among people.

Levinson (1983) also presented a pragmatic approach to the study of metaphors.

This was traced and explained by Onuigbo (2003:53). In the end, he concluded

that

the pragmatic approach in the analysis and interpretation of metaphors is

based on the assumption that the metaphorical content of utterance cannot

be derived by the principles of semantic interpretation. Rather, the semantic

will just provide a characterization of the literal meaning or conventional

content of the expressions. From this, together with the details of context,

the pragmatic provides the metaphorical interpretation.

The last two main ways of flouting the maxim of quality are irony and banter, and

they form a pair. As Leech (1983:144) says: while irony is an apparently friendly

way of being offensive (mockpoliteness), the type of verbal behaviour known as

„banter‟ is an offensive way of being friendly (Mock impoliteness).

He explains that in the case of irony, „the speaker expresses a positive sentiment

and implies a negative one‟ „If a student for example, comes down to breakfast

one morning and says, „if only you know how much I love being woken up at

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4a.m. by a fire alarm‟. Leech says, „she is being ironic and expecting her friends to

know that she means the opposite‟. Leech also explains that sarcasm is a form of

irony that is not so friendly. He says that it is intended to hurt. Examples given by

him include: „this is a lovely undercooked egg you‟ve given me here, as usual.

Yum!‟ or „why don‟t you leave all your dirty clothes on the lounge floor and then

you only need wash them when someone breaks a leg trying to get to the sofa?‟ on

banter, Leech confirms that

it expresses a negative sentiment and implies a positive one. It sounds like a

mild aggression, as in „You‟re nasty, mean and stingy. How can you only

give me one kiss‟, but it is intended to be an expression of friendship or

intimacy. Banter can sometimes be a tease and sometimes a flirtatious

comment.

From the above explanations and examples of flouts of the various maxims, we

have seen that the concept of implicature provides more explicit account of how it

is possible to mean more than what is actually „said‟ that is more than what is

literally expressed by the conventional sense of the linguistic expressions uttered.

2.2 Empirical Studies

Pragmatics gives so much importance, to the social principles of discourse.

Pragmatic says cutting (3):

takes a socio-cultural perspective on language usage, examining the way

that the principles of social behaviour as expressed is determined by the

social distance between speakers: Pragmatics describes the unwritten

maxims of conversation that speakers follow in order to cooperate and be

socially acceptable with each other.

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Keith (2000:20) noted that „the vast majority of pragmatic studies have been

devoted to conversation, where the silent influence of context and the

undercurrents are most fascinating....” But he goes on to show how written texts of

various kinds can be illuminated by pragmatics, and he cites particular examples

from literature. Pragmatics gives us ways into any written text. Take the following

example as enumerated by Keith, which is a headline from the guardian

newspaper of May 10, 2002. This reads:

Health Crises Looms as Life Expectancy Soars

„If we study the semantics of the headline; says Keith we may be puzzled‟.

The metaphor („soars‟)‟ he continues:

Indicate an increase in the average life expectancy of the U.K. population.

Most of us are living longer. So why is this a crises for health? Pragmaties

supplies the answer. The headline writer assumes that we share his or her

understanding that the crises is not in the health or longevity of the nation,

but in the financial cost to our society of providing health care for these

living people. The U.K. needs to pay more and employ more people to

provide this care. Reading the article will show this.

Leech and Short (1981:228) also take extracts from a novel to show how

characters communicate with one another and how their interactions can be

effectively interpreted using the pragmatic principles. The illustration of a passage

from Austin‟s Pride and Prejudice effectively analysed by Onuigbo (87)as

follows:

Oh, Mr. Bennet, you are wanted immediately; we are all in an uproar. You

must come and make Lizzy marry Mr. Collins, for she vows she will not

have him, and if you do not make haste, he will change his mind and not

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have her... I have not the pleasure in understanding you, said he when she

had finished her speech. Of what are you talking about‟?2

Of Mr. Collins and Lizzy. Lizzy declares she will not have Collins and Collins

begins to say he will not have Lizzy2

And what am I to do in this occasion?

It seems a hopeless business4

Speak to Lizzy yourself. Tell her you insist on her marrying him5 Mr.

Bennet rang and Miss Elizabeth was summoned to the library.

Come here child, cried her father as she appeared. I have sent for you

on an affair of importance. I understand that Collins have made you an

offer of marriage is it true?6

Elizabeth replied that it was.7

Very well and this offer you have refused?8

I have, sir.9

Very well, we have come to the point your mother insists on your

accepting it.10

Is it not true Mrs Bennet?11

Yes or I will never see her again.12

An unhappy alternative is before you Elizabeth. From this day, you

must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see

you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins and I will never see you

again if you do.

Leech and Short explain that the numbering is done as a matter of convenience to

represent conversational turns delimited by a change of speaker and not sentence.

They actually turned the passage into a stylized indirect speech using speech act

verbs to convey inter personal forces of what is said as shown below.

Mrs. Bennet TOLD Mr. Bennet that he was wanted She then EXHORTED

him to make Lizzy marry... and she EXPLAINED to him that Lizzy vowed.

She would not have Mr. Collins ... she warns him that if he did not make

haste....

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Mr. Bennet CLAIMS that he did not understand…

He ASKED her what she was talking about…2

Mrs. Bennet REPEATED that …3

According to Leech and Short (291):

the rendering shows „the relevance of speech act analysis to our

understanding of the conversation in the novel‟, since such a rendering

gives some idea of the ongoing nature of the Linguistic transaction between

Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. And it appears that we as readers must perform an

analysis of this kind in order to understand what is going on in the passage.

As part of the explanation, they remind us that every speech act has its

conditions of appropriacy (felicity conditions) but they also identify

something inappropriate or even absurd about Mrs. Bennet bidding to order

Elizabeth to marry Collins. To them one cannot reasonably order someone

to do something unless one is in a position to do so and unless what is

demanded is feasible. In other words, „it is not at all obvious that a wife can

normally order the husband, nor that a father can force a daughter to marry

against her will‟ (Leech and Short 293). The interpretation therefore, is that

the whole exchange is a humourous one especially as Mr. Bennet „imposes

a counter threat on his daughter, thus placing Elizabeth in a comic

dilemma‟. Their point is that the ironic turn of the last sentence, is

important because until that time, Mr. Bennet has not given any indication

that he is not in agreement with his wife even though his cross-examination

of his daugther on the information given by his wife, implies some

disbelief. And it is this implied disbelief that casts some doubt on her

assertion and finally thwarts her threats.

Pursuing the interpretation further, Leech and Short (294) exploit the process of

conversational implicature to show that much of what the reader understands

comes from inferences from the language based on their knowledge of the author‟s

literary world rather than what is openly said. In their explanation

Mr. Bennets question, „of what are you talking about. Presupposes that he

does not understand what the wife is saying either because of the

inappropriacy of the conversation or because the news is very surprising. In

fact, “the same ambivalence follows his next question, „and what am I to do

in the occasion?” this question, according to Leech and Short, presupposes

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a genuine request for advice or is designed to be a rhetorical question with

an implied force “there is nothing I can do”. The interpretation, therefore, is

that the question brings into serious doubt Mrs. Bennets‟ imperative

remark, „you must come and make Lizzy marry Mr. Collins‟ and makes it

clear that Mr. Bennet‟s questions are not genuine information-seeking

questions. To them, the question violates the maxims of relevance because

Mr. Bennet actually knows what Mrs Bennet is talking about as may be

concluded from his mischievous counter-threat. Their daughter‟s comic

dilemma arises from the conflicting interests of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. It is

of course, the reader‟s ability to interpret the relationship between Mr. and

Mrs. Bennet on the issue that shows that Mr. Bennet‟s questions are not

innocent questions but those which are meant to carry the extra information

you do not expect to do anything.

„From what one has seen‟, concludes Onuigbo (2003), Leech and Short (1981)

Have their primary interest in the empirical account of the message and not

on generalizations and allusions that cannot be sustained as may always be

the case with literary analysis. Again, Leech and Short avoid the kind of

purely linguistic description that may be studded with technicalities and

jargons. In other words, it can be said that part of the advantage of their

pragmatic procedure is that the argument is not only simple and sustainable

but also verifiable from such socio-linguistic factors as they are based on.

Although Leech and Short make references to formal language features,

such references are usually followed up with explanations that derive from

the context rather than from the meaning of the syntactic forms.

A formal example cited by Onuigbo (89) to show that Leech and Short

(1981) usually follow up their formal language feature examples, with

explanations that derive from the context rather than from the meaning of the

syntactic forms is Mrs. Bennet‟s imperative remarks „you must come and make

Lizzy marry Mr. Collins‟? he explains this by saying that

It sounds funny because she is not in a position to enforce this looking at

the linguistic representations and their literal interpretation, the matter looks

serious but a careful examination of the intentions and the socio-cultural

stereo-types of the situation, we can see as the analysts did, a humorous

exchange with some comic implications .... Infact, the identification of the

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imperative remarks, the interrogative sentences and the rhetorical questions

serve as mere contextualization cues. As soon as the analysts remind us of

the conditions of appropriacy in every speech act, we see the absurdity in

Mrs. Bennet‟s bid to her husband to order Lizzy to marry Mr. Collins. Such

pragmatic interpretation as given by Leech and Short have no mythical

allusions. Instead, every claim they make is sustained in an argument that

derives from obvious linguistic evidence which are however tied to the

context of the authors literary world.

From the above intricate & explicit analysis of the text, Onuigbo concludes that

It is common in literary analysis to identify peculiar linguistic features

without explaining the purpose of such features in the text and the authors

intention for choosing such unique features in a given text. But in a

pragmatic interpretation, important linguistic features are examined in line

with relevant socio-cultural imperatives of the author‟s world. And this

accounts for the success of pragmatic procedure in both literary and non-

literary interpretation.

Two other examples, both adverts, taken from Yule (1985: 127) shows that in

pragmatic interpretation, important linguistic features are examined in line with

relevant socio-cultural imperatives of the author‟s world. The first advert says

Driving by a parking lot, you may see a large sign that says HEATED

ATTENDANT PARKING. Now you know what each of these words mean,

and you know what the sign as a whole means. However, you don‟t

normally think that the sign is advertising a place where you can park your

„heated attendant‟. (you take an attendant, you heat him up, and this is the

place where you can park him). Alternatively it may indicate a place where

parking will be carried out by attendants who have been heated.

The words of the advert allow the above interpretations, says Yule (128). That

„you would normally understand that you can park your car in this place, that its a

heated area, and that there will be an attendant to look after the car‟ he then asks,

„how do you decide that the sign means this? (notice that the sign does not even

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have the word car on it)‟. He concludes his explanations by saying that „you use

the meanings of the words in combination, with the context in which they occur,

and you try to arrive at what the writer of the sign intended his message to

convey‟.

The second advert says BABY AND TODDLER SALE. Yule (128)

explains that

In the normal context of our present society, we assume that this store has

not gone into the business of selling young children over the counter, but

rather that it is advertising clothes for babies. The words clothes does not

appear, but our normal interpretation would be that the advertiser intended

us to understand his message as relating to the sale of baby clothes and not

of babies.

2.3 Summary

From the above illustrations we have seen that words do not always mean

what they say in literature. In order to arrive at the full meaning of linguistic

features as used by writers, they have to be examined in line with relevant socio-

cultural imperatives of the author‟s world. And this accounts for pragmatic success

in both literary and non-literary interpretation.

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CHAPTER THREE

SOCIO – POLITICAL BACKGROUND OF THE POEMS

3.0 Introduction

Africa is a vast and varied continent. The histories and geographical

conditions of African countries vary with different stages of economic

development and sets of policies. Equally, the sources of conflict in Africa reflect

this diversity and complexity. Okunyade (2008: 3) observes that “some of the

sources of conflict in Africa are ignited by internal feuds, some reflect the

dynamics of a particular sub-region and a few have international dimensions”.

Though the sources of these conflicts are varied, most of them are linked with

common themes and experiences. Armed violence and conflict in Africa for

example, Okunyade (2008) says, “are often caused by issues which range from

lack of transparency in regimes, inadequate checks and balances, non-adherence to

the rule of law, absence of defined peaceful means to change or replacement of

leadership, the absence of accountability of leaders, and the reliance on centralized

and highly personalized forms of governance to ethnic conflict”.

In Nigeria, though one would agree with Ademoyega (1981: I) that

Nigeria‟s political problems sprang from the carefree manner in which the British

took over, administered, and abandoned the government and people of Nigeria …

making no effort to weld the country together and unite the heterogeneous groups

of people”, yet the observable local corruption and incompetence had to be blamed

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less on the colonialists than on an oppressive indigenous Nigerian hierarchy.

Povey (1979: 4) added that „this contemporary society provided no sustenance for

the dreams that had marked an earlier period when independence seemed to offer

to re-shape African society into a utopia of freedom and progress”.

The British constitutional framework of a tripartite Nigeria established a

country with three large regions and three centres of power: Kaduna in the North,

Ibadan in the West and Enugu in the East. This framework has also contributed

greatly in shaping the present day relationship of suspicion, apprehension and

doubt among the divergent ethnic groups in the country.

With Federalism which was instituted primarily to shun one ethnic group

dominating others and also protecting the interests of the minorities, the nation

was once again split into constituencies, each with its autonomous power. In this

political arrangement also, it was observed that the colonial administrators have

passed on to the Nigerian wards the prejudices which had enabled them to think

and act in the belief that this informal federation was a marriage of convenience

between incompatibles. With this impression in the minds of Nigerian peoples, it

becomes very difficult for them to work harmoniously together without such tribal

affiliations.

Each of the tribes of the country works only for the interest of its people and not

the nation, thus in these blind competitions of each trying to dominate the other,

conflicts of ethnic nature always occur. Ademoyega (1981: 48) reported that

„Northern Nigeria consistently and openly maintained that the amalgamation of

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Northern and Southern Nigeria in 1914 was „a mistake‟. He summarized the

economic situation of things in Nigeria in 1965 under the system of government as

an extreme form of capitalism. He went on to say that

Under that system, the vast majority of our people --- about ninety – nine

per cent, were extremely poor and lived in abject poverty; while a few

millionaires were being created here and there all over the country, by using

their political connections to divert government (the people‟s) money into

their hands. To be specific, there were governmental Finance Corporations

and Marketing Boards which were used to divert public money into private

hands by way of loans and inflated contracts. This system also favoured a

few middlemen, whose palms were greased by this diversion of funds. The

masses did not benefit but were impoverished thereby, hence the ever –

widening gap between the rich and the poor. No avenues were open to

check or correct these horrible anomalies (P. 48).

The masses showed their dissatisfaction with the socio-political decadence,

corruption violence and brazen exploitation of the populace in violent

demonstrations. Intellectual disaffection is most acutely seen in the searching

series of contemporary novels of which Achebe‟s Man of the People and Armah‟s

The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born are among the best known and perhaps the

most scathing. In poetry, the mood of the African writer is bitter – ranging

between the negative pole of despair and the positive element of anger. George

Orwell, the English writer, was explaining why people would want to write. This

was aptly summarized by Onyima (2011: 7) who said that

Putting aside the need to earn a living, there are four great motives for

writing. The first reason is what he calls sheer egoism‟, that is the desire to

be talked about, to be remembered after death. The second is „aesthetic

enthusiasm‟ – the desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable

and ought not to be missed. „Historical impulse‟ – to discover facts and

store them for posterity, is the third reason. The fourth reason why people

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write, according to Orwell, is for „political purpose‟ – that is the desire to

push the world in a certain direction.

In Africa, Povey (1979: 2) observes that „African poets, much more than their

more private and abstract western brothers, have traditionally been the spokesmen

for society. They have now joined the chorus of complaint about the situation that

pervades contemporary Africa‟. African poets at this time committed their poetry

to the exploration of the imbalance in society caused by bad leadership. Onuigbo

(2003: 115) clearly stated that

The writer has the responsibility to search for his or her subject matter

within the experiences of his society and these experiences usually derive

from the socio-political and spiritual lives of the people that make up the

society. In most cases therefore the writer‟s creative imagination is directed

towards the exposure of analysis of the socio-political contradictions which

the society experiences.

To elucidate the above information from Onuigbo further, Okafor (2008: 151)

avers that

A work of art is never created in a vacuum, it merely supposes a culture, a

civilization which is the emanation of a particular historical, geographical,