A LINGUISTIC STUDY OF IDIOMS AND PROVERBS IN SELECTED LITERARY WORKS OF ALIYU KAMAL

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Department of Arts

Every language often reveals what the people who use it see, feel and think; what they can talk about, and how they organize the world around them. Idioms and Proverbs are linguistic elements that address the heart of a discourse in any given context-truthfully and objectively. In Africa, and especially in Nigerian cultures, Idioms and Proverbs are considered as the reliable horses, which convey meanings to their destinations or the hearts of listeners/readers. As such, their interpretation requires more than linguistic processing; it also demands the interplay of contexts from where they usually derive their meanings. This work,A Linguistic Study of the Idioms and Proverbs in Selected Literary Works of Aliyu Kamal, therefore, contends that the meanings of Idioms and Proverbs, especially of Hausa origin, translated into English and used in texts could be worked out within the contextual theory of Firth (1957), which is both semantic and pragmatic in nature. Some characteristic features of Hausa Idioms, found to be common to that of the English Language, such as those of being collocational, non-compositional, elaborate in meaning and unchanging feature, etc. are highlighted in this study. Similarly, types of Proverbs which are analytical/philosophical, rhetorical as well as didactic in nature have been explored. From the point of view of the grammatical analysis carried out in this study, Idioms and Proverbs have varied syntactic structures ranging from phrases to simple sentences, complex sentences and compound forms. This study demonstrates that Idioms and Proverbs play significant roles in clarifying, exemplifying, underscoring and influencing human communication. With the broad analysis of the sixty Idioms and Proverbs at lexical, grammatical as well as the immediate and wider contexts, this work attempts to further illustrate the vitality of semantics in negotiating meaning especially in a second language context. The findings from the study reveal that Idioms and Proverbs serve as linguistic elements which would allow for the enhancement of Linguistic Universals. This is because the study has established that both the English and Hausa Idioms and Proverbs characteristically share certain common features. The study concludes also that interpreting Idioms and Proverbs demands background knowledge of the language from which they have been drawn.