Dyskursywne funkcje przysłów w języku hausa na przykładzie powieści Magana jari ce (‘Skarb w słowach zaklęty’) Abubakara Imama
Discursive functions of Hausa proverbs in the novel Magana jari ce (‘Speaking is a treasure’) by Abubakar Imam

Summary/Abstract: Magana jari ce, authored by Abubakar Imam (1937), is a novel in the form of a story within a story with an elaborate narrative thread. It ranks among the most outstanding pieces in the literary canon of the West African Hausa people. Earlier studies on Magana jari ce focused on its content and cultural significance (Furniss 1996; Jeż 1989; Piłaszewicz and Jeż 2003), as well as style (Muhammad 2015). This paper focus es on indicating the discursive functions performed by proverbs in Magana jari ce, with reference to the main elements of the content and composition of the novel and its cultural significance. The analysis of the functions of Hausa proverbs was based on the perception of discourse as a structured use of language to convey and negotiate meaning in various communicative contexts. Assigning meaning to linguistic utterances, referred to as interpretation (Topczewska 2016) and the semiotic functions of the text (Czerwiński 2016), form the basis for inferring the discursive features of the language of a literary text. The analysis shows that the proverbs used in Magana jari ce shape the narrative, by dividing (segmenting) the text into chapters, and organize the internal structure of each chapter. Proverbs function as chapter titles; they are also used as elements of the communicative strategy in dialogues and as communicative tools for conveying abstract meaning. The interpretation of the functions of Hausa proverbs in a literary text takes into account the evaluation of the language and its communicative features in the Hausa culture.

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