A Sociolinguistic Consideration of Intermediation in Greeting Discourse among the Yòrúba of South West Nigeria

Opoola, Bolanle Tajudeen
Adeoye, Jelili Adewale

Journal of Language and Literature
Vol 19, No 2 (2019): October

Existing studies on Yorùbá greeting forms dwell on the appropriateness of their use, with respect to time of the year, event, condition, occupation, vocation, context, politeness and content. The studies portray greetings as discourse between two people or parties who are capable of exchanging   pleasantries. None of the existing works has discussed intermediation in greeting discourse among the Yorùbá people such that greetings that are directed to the second person(s) such as toddlers, extremely sick persons, kings and the bereaved are answered on their behalf by a third party. This paper examines intermediation and the rationale in greeting discourse among the Yorùbá people. The data for this study were drawn from participant observation, Yorùbá literature texts, and Yorùbá home movies. The Mutual Contextual Beliefs Theory of Pragmatics as proposed by Bach and Harnish (1979) was adopted for the data analysis. The study established, among other things, that greetings are sacrosanct in Yorùbá culture and the answer/reply is obligatory, irrespective of the state, status, circumstance and condition of the person(s) being greeted. It is also shown that intermediation in greeting discourse could be for politeness, incapacitation, authority and educating the young ones.