Semiotic study of idioms related to the royal court of Danxome in Benin Republic (ex Dahomey)
Keywords:
context, historical, idioms, semiotics, sociolinguisticsAbstract
This paper undertook a semiotic analysis and interpretation of idiomatic expressions that were used in the former royal court of Danxome in Republic of Benin (Ex Dahomey). The qualitative analysis based on the Saussurian and Piercian views on semiotics was applied on a corpus of idioms collected from primary sources with close links with descendants of the kingdom. The results achieved were forceful in disclosing three main patterns of the analysed idioms. First, they uncovered the presence of culturally loaded idiomatic centres that represent the keys to unlocking the intended meanings therein contained. Secondly, the very phrasing of some of the idioms displayed the hierarchical organisation that was intrinsic to the royal court. Thirdly, a further investigation into their intended content disclosed an association of both spoken and sign language in the delivery of the message conveyed through some specific idiomatic expressions of the royal court of Danxome. These results led to the conclusion that the idioms used in this royal court were more than mere language for daily ordinary interactions. Rather, they represented real artefacts, encapsulating the culture, the history and the social relationships that best represent and portray such a restricted social and linguistic community.
Downloads
References
Bolander, B., & Locher, M. A. (2014). Doing sociolinguistic research on computer-mediated data: A review of four methodological issues. Discourse, Context & Media, 3, 14-26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2013.10.004
Campbell-Kibler, K. (2012). The implicit association test and sociolinguistic meaning. Lingua, 122(7), 753-763. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2012.01.002
Chandler, D. (2007). Semiotics: The Basics 2nd edition Routledge. New York.
Crystal, D. (2011). A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. John Wiley & Sons.
Culler, J. (1981). The pursuit of signs. New York: Cornell University Press
Damourette, J., & Pichon, E. (1927). Des mots à la pensée: essai de grammaire de la langue française 1911-1940. Slatkine Reprints.
De Saussure, F. (2011). Course in general linguistics. Columbia University Press.
Deely, J. (1984). Basics of Semiotics.USA: Indiana University Press
Eco, U. (1976). A theory of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Edwards, J. (1985). Language, society and identity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Errington, J. J. (1985). On the nature of the sociolinguistic sign: Describing the Javanese speech levels. In Semiotic mediation (pp. 287-310). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-491280-9.50018-2
Ervin-Tripp, S. M. (1969). Sociolinguistics. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 4, pp. 91-165). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60077-5
Fromkin, V. & Rodman, R. (1988). An introduction to language (fourth edition), New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
Hall, S. (1972). 1980. Encoding/decoding. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (ed.) Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 79, 128-38.
Halliday, M. A. K. (2006). Linguistic studies of text and discourse (Vol. 2). A&C Black.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1989). Language, context, and text: Aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective.
Ino, L., Dinar, S. S., Yunus, Y., & Harmin, H. (2017). Survival Wolio language in adulthood in Baubau City: Sociolinguistic study. International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Culture, 3(6), 1-13.
Keller, R. (1994). On language change: The invisible hand in language. New York: Routledge
Leach, E. (1976). Culture and communication: the logic by which symbols are connected. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Makoni, S. B. (2011). Sociolinguistics, colonial and postcolonial: an integrationist perspective. Language Sciences, 33(4), 680-688. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2011.04.020
Martin, B., & Ringham, F. (2000). Dictionary of semiotics. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Nenonen, M., & Niemi, J. (1999). Morphological isolates in idioms: Cranberries or real words?. Brain and Language, 68(1-2), 158-164. https://doi.org/10.1006/brln.1999.2099
Rickford, J. R. (2016). Raciolinguistics: How language shapes our ideas about race. Oxford University Press.
Salliyanti, S., Susiolo, H., & Kudadiri, A. (2021). The kinship greetings of blood and marital ties in the Minangkabau community: A sociolinguistic study. Linguistics and Culture Review, 5(S3), 1356-1367.
Salzmann, Z. (1998). Language, culture and society.An introduction to linguistic anthropology. USA: Westview Press.
Sebeok, T. A. (1989). The sign and its masters. Lanham: University Press of America.
Sebeok, T. A. (1994). An introduction to semiotics. London: Pinter Publishers
Shigemoto, J. (1997). Language change and language planning and policy. In Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (1st edition). United States of America :U.S. Dept. of Education
Silverstein, M. (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & communication, 23(3-4), 193-229. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0271-5309(03)00013-2
Silverstein, M. (2010). “Direct” and “indirect” communicative acts in semiotic perspective. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(2), 337-353. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.06.003
Swann, J., & Deumert, A. (2018). Sociolinguistics and language creativity. Language Sciences, 65, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2017.06.002
Sweet, H. (1964). The practical study of languages. London, Oxford University Press, Ely House.
Zelinger, J. (1979). Semiotics and theatre dance. In New Directions in Dance (pp. 39-50). Pergamon. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-024773-1.50009-2
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Copyright (c) 2022 International journal of linguistics, literature and culture
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Articles published in the International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Culture (IJLLC) are available under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Authors retain copyright in their work and grant IJLLC right of first publication under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Users have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles in this journal, and to use them for any other lawful purpose.
Articles published in IJLLC can be copied, communicated and shared in their published form for non-commercial purposes provided full attribution is given to the author and the journal. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
This copyright notice applies to articles published in IJLLC volumes 6 onwards. Please read about the copyright notices for previous volumes under Journal History.
