Yoruba Proverb as Impoliteness and Power Negotiator in Kemi Adetiba’s King of Boys

Abstract

Yoruba proverbs are linguistic resources that are deployed by the Yoruba people to achieve certain communicative goals. Studies have investigated Yoruba proverbs from different points of view. Among the Yoruba, one of the functions of proverbs is that they are reserved for impoliteness and power in relational communication, and the choice of a Yoruba movie, King of Boys, underpins the analytical interest of this paper. Therefore, this paper examines set of Yoruba proverbs; which in this paper, is termed conflictive-motivated face-threatening Yoruba proverbs (CFYPs) in the movie. Jonathan Culpeper’s (1996) theory of impoliteness is adopted as the theoretical framework, and seven Yoruba proverbs that demonstrate instances of conflict are subjected to discourse interpretations. Analysis reveals that aspects of Yoruba proverbs that are sensitive to conflictive relational works in the movie are predominantly categorised as negative and positive impoliteness triggers. Negative impoliteness motivated CFYPs which are prevalently associated with wielding power are deployed as threats to life, while positive impoliteness induced CFYPs are employed to insult and criticise, especially by the less powerful. This paper concludes that there are CFYPs which are dependent on the exigencies to reinforce or weaken specific identities and socio-political norms or mis-norms within Yoruba socio-cultural milieu.