Analogy and intertextuality in Setswana oral/written poetic diction

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores images in terms of intertextuality between language, culture, proverb and poetry, which is a natural phenomenon. This may be because the Setswana language primarily functions in the realm of orality and because the language preserves extensive use of proverbs, even in everyday usage. Language carries culture (Malefo 2007; Ngugi 1986, 16) and as such there is continuity between language, proverb, oral poetry and music in Setswana. Cultural images pervade Batswana life and imagination, touching the sensations, emotions and the imagination, and hence run as a thread that connects language, proverb, oral and written poetry, history and norm.