Kofi Agyekum

The pragmatics of Akan greetings

This article addresses greetings as one of the most frequent linguistic interactional routines among the Akan of Ghana. The article will look at the functions, situations, and the major forms of Akan greetings. The article will highlight the major functions of greetings such as the creation of social relationship, commitment to one another in social encounters and manifestation of an individuals communicative competence. It discusses the taxonomy of Akan greetings in terms of formality, periods, events and activities. The article further looks at the changes in greetings in the Akan modern society. The article treats greetings within the frameworks of ethnography of communication, politeness and speech act theory within anthropological linguistics.

Honorifics and Status Indexing in Akan Communication

This paper addresses honorifics as an important aspect of formality, persuasion and politeness in Akan. Akan is a traditional society that attaches greater importance to address forms, honorifics and politeness in speech situations. This paper considers honorifics as a deference system; it treats types of honorifics and their linguistic forms, such as power-based, solidarity, occupational and gender-based honorifics. I shall also look at some of the ethnographic situations in which honorifics are employed.

Apology: a repair mechanism in Akan social interaction

This article addresses apology among the Akan of Ghana. An apology is a redressive speech mechanism that pays attention to the face needs of interlocutors during social interaction. Among the Akan, apology forms an integral part of the communicative competence of the individual and denotes humility and a sense of honesty and integrity. This article discusses apology under the speech act of expressives. An apology is one of the speech acts that gives information about the Akan social values of speech and social interaction. This article will look at the functions, forms and major features of apology. It will discuss the communicative and ethnographic situations that trigger the use of apologies in the Akan language. It will also look at the use of apology in ntam, a statutory verbal taboo among the Akan.

Akan traditional arbitration: Its structure and language

This paper examines the basic components of the process of settlement, types of offences and language of Akan traditional arbitration. The paper also considers arbitration and Akan sociocultural norms and values. The paper finally discusses the status of Akan arbitration within the context of contemporary forms of adjudication, democracy, Westernisation, urbanisation, Christianity and Islam. The paper argues that arbitration is still an alternative form of conflict resolution.

The sociocultural concept of ohia, poverty in Akan: Konadu’s song Ɛnneϵ mϵkɔ na maba

This paper looks at the concept of ohia ‘poverty’ from Akan sociocultural perspectives. It considers poverty from the Akan background and how the poor see themselves and the factors they believe are responsible for their poverty. Social, cultural, individualistic, fatalistic and religious explanations to poverty are explored within the theoretical framework of language ideology, which reflects the beliefs people have about their language and the justification and rationalisation they make about the language structure and use. It is argued that to understand the concept of poverty among the Akans one has to resort to their cultural beliefs, perception, worldview and social structures. The data for discussion is based on a song text entitled Ɛnneϵ mϵkɔ na maba ‘Then I will go and come back’ by a renowned highlife musician Alex Kwabena Konadu. Konadu captures the concept of poverty through the image of the Akan family system. The paper uses stylistic devices like deixes, parallelism, repetition and symbolism to analyse the data. The rich imagery and symbolism in the song text highlight how the society conceptualises poverty based on their past experiences.

Barry Hallen, The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful. Discourse about Values in Yoruba Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2001. Pp. 219. Hb

This book combines culture, philosophy and linguistics by examining everyday language. It concentrates on the semantic interrelations between aspects of epistemic, moral and aesthetic values of a persons life in Yoruba society. The book contains six chapters and an appendix of Yoruba-language quotations.