Linguistic Terrorism, Culture and Yorùbá Women of South West Nigeria

Abstract

Terrorism comes in various forms and formats. Linguistic terrorism manifests in the use of language. Language is one of the vehicles that drives a culture. Culture is a prominent aspect of identity. So, language is employed in communication with effects. This paper sets out to explore how language, through YoruÌ€baÌ proverbs, is used as a form of linguistic terrorism on the women of South West Nigeria. The data for this study is made up of 10 YoruÌ€baÌ proverbs selected from 17 of the collected YoruÌ€baÌ proverbs having to do with linguistic terrorism of YoruÌ€baÌ women of South West Nigeria. The selected YoruÌ€baÌ proverbs were translated into English to make them amenable to analysis. Two analytical approaches were used: 1. Reference Mapping adapted from Olubode-Sawe (2009) and Speech Acts principles taken from Austin (1962); Searle (1975) and Searle et al (1980). The study seeks to answer the questions: (1) What proverbs in the corpus of YoruÌ€baÌ proverbs express linguistic terror to women/wives/females/daughters generally? (2) How is the linguistic terror produced in the selected proverbs and, (3) Which of the male or female gender suffers inequality arising from the use of the proverbs. It was revealed that all the 10 proverbs selected reflect terror to women /wives /females /daughters/ mother. Linguistic terror is produced through illocutionary acts such as threatening, declaring, warning, deriding, informing and advising, while in perlocutionary acts, linguistic terror is produced by acts which elicit in the women /wives /females /daughters a feeling of depression, disappointment, low self-esteem, irresponsibility, wastefulness, insensitivity, deceit, gluttony and greed. It is also revealed that the female gender is presented as not equal to its male gender counterpart. This aligns well the patriarchal nature of the YoruÌ€baÌ of South West Nigeria.