Ruth Finnegan discusses oral literature and spoken language and its performative nature, adopting Austin’s and Searle’s model of performatives. The book argues that everyday language is the key to understanding African ethics and morals. This book is suitable for oral literature and African pragmatics studies and research at the universities. It has twelve interrelated chapters that are grouped under five main parts.
Chapter 1, “Introducing words,” views spoken language as a form of action and an art. Finnegan considers Africa as the home of oral literature, and orality. Oral literature and ordinary language are the fundamental practices of discourse and a gateway to African philosophy. African oral traditions, verbal arts, words, images, and experiences are reflected in African conversations, ceremonies, verbal taboos, personal names, and so on. Performers, audiences, researchers, analysts, transcribers, translators, and publishers are all involved in oral literature. Studies of African oral literature have passed through colonial and postcolonial periods. In current research by African scholars and language experts in African universities, greater emphasis is placed on context and the appreciation of oral texts (see Agyekum Reference Agyekum2005; Okpewho Reference Okpewho1992; Palmer Reference Palmer and McArthur1992:260–61; Finnegan Reference Finnegan1992). The chapter considers how we can project past experiences into the future using earlier works on African oral literature, including Finnegan’s.
Chapter 2 discusses “The reflective practice of speech and language: A West African example.” Finnegan criticizes the assumption that nonliterate cultures are ignorant of the depths of linguistic expression, analysis, and the capacity for abstract thought. She cites how language was reflected in the life of the nonliterate Limbas in the 1950s and 1960s, who cherished their language as the most functional tool in all aspects of their life (p. 19). The Limbas used folktales as indirect ways to comment on sensitive aspects of their society. The term gbonkoli ‘speaking’ and its various derivations, including magbonkoli ma ‘spoken words’ and hugbonkoli ‘forms of speech’, was one of the key concepts of Limba philosophy and social life. Formal speaking, persuasive language, and responsible talk were needed in linguistic routines such as thanks, requests, greetings, apology, arbitration, and prayer to bring about social harmony (26). The quality of a Limba chief depends on his communicative competence in formal language usage (23).
Chapter 3 is entitled “How to do things with words among the Limba.” Finnegan lists Limba performative expressions, such as yan theteke ‘I plead/entreat/apologize/pray’. These are contractual and social responsibility expressions, used in apology, persuasion, accepting gifts, greetings, formal announcements, marriage, initiation rites, and sacrifices.
Chapter 4, “The arts and action in story-telling,” discusses the importance of storytelling among the Limbas. The stories are multi-thematic and cover topics such as people, plants, animals, supernatural beings, God, and creation. The stories have recognized structures, plots, characterization, diction, rhetoric, and complex narration and performance. Good Limba storytellers who skillfully employed rhetorical devices like repetition, gesture, ideophones, poetry, and songs were greatly admired and rewarded (45). The audience also played significant roles in storytelling through drumming and dancing and the criticism of the performances.
Chapter 5, “Stories of Africa – stories about Africa,” gives examples of African stories and the role of tricksters, especially Spider. It states how the trickster personae have widely spread over the world, especially among African Americans and Caribbeans. The Anansi “Spider stories” symbolize how the vulnerable can outwit and rebel against strong, dominant societies. Other stories, songs, poems, and performances indicate how Africans have been silenced by slavery, colonialism, and globalization, and their reactions to these. The stories are expressed in written forms, plays, songs, films, and sermons and put on radio and television (69).
Chapter 6, “Literature as oral, the oral as literature,” makes a case for the literariness of African literature. It considers performance as the major difference between oral and written literature (78). It emphasizes the most attractive performance techniques, including musicality, tone variation, literary devices, and humor. Other characteristics of oral literature include composition, performer, audience, anonymous authorship, verbal variability, creativity, and composition. Oral and written literatures are interwoven, and most types of written literature are rendered orally before being written.
Chapter 7, “Is oral literature composed in performance?” traces Parry’s and Lord’s Oral Formulaic Theory, which claimed that oral literature was created and composed during performance, so that composition and performance were cotemporal. The theory focuses on flexibility, creativity, verbal variability, and transformations in composition and performances (98). Finnegan identifies the flaws of the Parry–Lord theory using evidence from African oral literature and asserts a strong overlap between oral and written literature (102). Examples of mixed oral/written forms are Fulani, Swahili, Hausa, and Somali poetry and English and American ballads. Finnegan argues that the oral formulaic theory is good but not wholly applicable to the complexity of African oral literature (107).
Chapter 8, “Time, performance and literature,” argues that early scholars of African oral literature were mainly interested in the textual dimension and devoted much time to the collection and analysis of texts. However, every composition and performance is a social event organized within time. Performances are time-consuming and time-bound, but the time involved in their organization and performance is not represented in African printed texts (123). Conventional devices cannot capture the actual enactment of the performances.
Chapter 9, “‘Construction of Oral Literature in Africa’: Hindsights a generation later,” emphasizes the complexity of oral texts and the lack of clear boundaries between artists, audience, analysts, inscribers, and interpreters. Finnegan denounces the view that African oral literature researchers were preoccupied with primitive folktales, tradition, and outdated tribal lore rather than living literary cultures (140). Oral literature is now well established in both African and Western universities. Its role, process, circulation, methodology, and complexities in African societies are considered in African terms, rather than using Western terms to push an African agenda. Only new Afrocentric theoretical ideas, methodologies, and models can explore the richness of African verbal artistry (152). Afrocentric theories should emphasize African society, politics, economics, creativity, cultures, and personal profiles of oral artists (156).
Chapter 10, “Creating texts: Transformation and enscription,” looks at the processes involved in printing and publishing African oral literature genres in books, journals, magazines, and similar media. Oral texts were normally controlled by foreign scholars backed by native informants and assistants. The researchers’ ideologies determined the percentage of the oral texts to be captured and published. The section called “The initial capture” discusses the dictation, audio and video recording, and making of sketchy notes about the performances, as well as translations. Problems in transcription and translation include which portions are to be transcribed, orthography, and the representation of prosodic features, archaic forms, ideophones, stage directions, and nonverbal communication. Despite new conventions and electronic techniques in oral literature, printed texts are still artificial products.
Chapter 11, “Conceptualising oral texts and beyond,” focuses on the changing dynamics of oral literature from oral traditions to the present state and their popular culture dynamics, with multiple stakeholders in African oral literature. Oral texts are now studied in schools (184). Oral literature is deeply rooted in culture; however, some contemporary oral texts are related to modern ways of social life involving the economy, politics, and history (180). We now have praise poetry, texts about personalities, and traditional and modern songs on film and CD, theater, radio, and TV. These have both oral and written dimensions, as in Yoruba panegyrics and Somali and Hausa poems.
Chapter 12, the epilogue, entitled “Words, the human attribute?” sees language as the fundamental pillar of every culture. Finnegan and other scholars assert that African oral perspectives, on tapes, visual arts, TV, video, film, live performance, and textual language offer a lot to mankind (see Obododimma Reference Obododimma and Kaschula2001; Okpewho Reference Okpewho1992:48; Yankah Reference Yankah1989; Kendon Reference Kendon and McNeil2000:61). The chapter reiterates the power of the word and orality and the complexity of speech (217). Finnegan argues that equating written language with enlightenment and oral language with primitive mentality is a linguistic partiality, Eurocentric and over-generalizing. Now both African and European cultures have written and oral forms. Finnegan stipulates that “doing things with written words is emphatically an ‘African’ not just ‘European’ practice” (222). Orality and written texts are interrelated and words are the major resources for enriching human life.
