A SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF URHOBO PROVERBS

A SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF URHOBO PROVERBS

ABSTRACT

This research carries out a sociolinguistic study of Urhobo proverbs. Its aim is to explore and analyze Urhobo proverbs from a sociolinguistic perspective in the context of English as a second language in Nigeria. This will go a long way to offer a sociolinguistic insight to the contributions of Urhobo language, culture and way of life in the sociolinguistic context of English as a second language. The data for the study was sourced and collected orally from competent Urhobo native speakers from the context of use and Urhobo music. The qualitative and analytic research designs were adopted for the analysis. In all, fifty (50) proverbs were analyzed using Dell Hyme’s Ethnography of Communication theory as the major analytical framework with insights from Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. This is because of the relevance of Dell Hymes’ SPEAKING which  accounts for such sociolinguistic variables as setting, scene, participants, ends, act sequence, instrumentality and genre as is evidenced in the data; and how the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis allows this study to relate its data to aspects of Urhobo world view and culture. On typology, Adedimeji’s (2003) typological classification is applied for the classification of the data into types. It was discovered that SPEAKING allows for a comprehensive understanding of the data for this study as a result of its explicit and analytic potentials while the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis shows aspect of Urhobo culture that manifest in Urhobo proverbs.