Thesis Abstract and Dissertation Abstracts
Riddling as everyday discourse: Analysis of context, event and audience
Abstract Category: Arts
Course / Degree: PhD
Institution / University: Makerere University, Uganda
Published in: 2011
The last half century [1960 – 2010] has seen substantial growth in African Oral literature research, but not much has been done in the area of riddles, in particular, riddling as performance. Many of the scholars have collected riddles in African linguistic communities basing on flawed premises that attributed riddles to children and defined them as short formulaic question-and-answer forms; signposts that have been misleading. As a result, many scholars have missed the opportunity to find, enjoy, document and study objectively numerous riddles in Africa. In contrast to studies that considered riddles as “childish,” and “minor” this study thinks of riddles as intellectual resources of the everyday social discourses. It analyses the aesthetic fields of the event, context and audience that produces riddle texts during social performance. It also examines how riddle performance structure contributes to the meanings and interpretations of riddle content.
Using ethnographic research methods which included participant-observation, key informant interviewing, unobtrusive observation, note-taking, audio-visual documentation, focused group discussions, and judgment sampling for data collection; and contextualized discourse analysis, narrative analysis, analogy, critical discourse analysis, and qualitative gender analysis, to analyze my findings, I have sampled three case studies taken from two localities of Busoga in eastern Uganda between 2007 and 2010. I recorded ten hours of audio-visual footage in Lusoga language, transcribed the texts into the written form using the Unified Orthography of the Eastern Languages and translated some of texts into English.
I found riddles were performed and enjoyed by people of all age groups. Adults and well informed younger people had a big role to play during riddling as sources of information, inspiration and direction. Riddles were mostly performed during conversations and social events like marriages, funeral wakes and public gatherings. There were three types of riddle performances: First, the short formulaic dialogic riddle forms consisting of short actones. Second, the long narrative didactic riddle forms consisting of sentence actones. Third, the mixed theatrical riddle forms consisting of melodrama, physical games and word-games.
The riddle acts may be grouped into fourteen structural patterns, each pattern exhibiting at least three of the following seven moves: antecedent, precedent, unravelling, crowning, declamation, affirmation and agreement. The structure was linear in the formulaic riddle forms and cyclic in the other two forms. The riddles was seen to be embedded and embodied in words, actions and non actions including written statements, song, costume, gesture and silence. The most dominant patterns were 1 where all the seven moves were revealed and Pattern 5 where crowning and declamation was absent, which showed that riddles were flexible forms not so much tied up. I therefore concluded that riddles are first, social discourses, second, works of the imagination, third, enjoyed by all people. The audience influenced by the context of the event makes the riddle in a riddle. Although riddle precedents appear to be predetermined, the answers can be innovative.
Thesis Keywords/Search Tags:
riddles, riddling, performance, Busoga, Lusoga
This Thesis Abstract may be cited as follows:
Gulere, Wambi Cornelius. (2011) Riddling as Everyday Discourse: Analysis of Centext, Event and Audience. Unpublished Thesis, School of Languages, Literature and Communications, Makerere University: Kampala
Submission Details: Thesis Abstract submitted by Cornelius Gulere from Uganda on 20-May-2011 17:50.
Abstract has been viewed 4451 times (since 7 Mar 2010).
Cornelius Gulere Contact Details: Email: gulerefoundation@gmail.com
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