Dayo Akanmu
New idioms and idiomatic expressions, which are modern stock expressions, constitute communicative clogs in Yoruba routine discourses because of their semantic complexity and deviant nature. Existing studies have established their scope of usage in Yoruba music but have hardly addressed their communicative adaptability in Yoruba programmes on radio. And in view of the erroneous views of Fakoya and Sunday Sun in its editorial comments of March 28, 2004 that fresh ideas and concepts emanating from globalization/science and technology can hardly be captured by the lexis and structure of Nigerian indigenous languages. This paper investigated issues expressed with these idioms, context and strategies for using them in various Yoruba programmes on radio. This is with a view to establishing their communicative and stylistic relevance in Yoruba discourses. The paper adopted Mukarousky’s theory of Standard Language because of its capacity to explain the “differential specifica” between the language of everyday interaction and literary language. Six Yoru?ba? programmes were purposively selected for having sufficient usage of new idioms on these radio stations: 105.6 FM, Lagos; 107.5 FM, Lagos; 92.9 FM, Lagos; 98.5 FM, I?ba?da?n; 99.2 FM, I?ba?da?n and 10.55 FM I?ba?da?n. Lagos and I?ba?da?n were chosen based on the urbanised nature of the two cities and constant usage of new idioms on the programmes. Data were subjected to pragmatic and stylistic analyses. In all these, two issues were expressed: globalization and transportation. Globalization, which was peculiar to the electronic media, occurred in the context of mobile phoning/internet while transportation appeared also in electronic media revealing the context of fraud/embezzlement and infrastructure. Nominalisation, compounding and phonoeasthetic coinages were the linguistic strategies employed for the formation of new idioms in this paper. Nominalization and compounding occurred in virtually all the stations; the former was contextualized in advertisement (e?ro?-a-ya?ra-bi?-a?s?a?) and fraud / embezzlement (o?ko??-o?-ro??-i?bo?n-mi?) while the latter was in the context of advertisement (i?ta?ku?n e??e??te??e??li?), political rift/power play politics (i?ta?ku?n a?gba?ye?), information/security (afa?ra? olo?ke?) and executive class (o??bo??ku?n o?lo??ye??). Phonoeasthetic coinages occurred in the contexts of fraud and information. New idioms and idiomatic expressions, used to express socioeconomic issues in Yoru?ba? routine communication, occurred in mediated and non-mediated contexts on radio and were conveyed through nominalization, compounding and phonoeasthetic coinages. These idioms reflect dynamism and modernity-constrained stylistic choices in Yoruba.
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