DISCURSIVE DYNAMICS OF ETHNOSENTENTIAL STRATEGIES IN SELECTED AFROCENTRIC HYMNODY

Abstract

The distinctive nature of hymnody in Christian religious worship has made it a rich and limitless subject for scholarly examination, offering a unique form of communication that continues to fascinate and inspire academic inquiry in Africa, especially in Nigeria. Existing studies in Christian hymns have examined the contents of hymns as music forms with little or no scholarly considerations on the ethnosentential strategies employed by the hymnists. This study, therefore, intends to fill this gap with the view to identifying and discussing discursive dynamics of ethnosentential strategies in Afrocentric hymnody. This study utilizes relevant insights from Teun van Dijk’s socio-cognition model of Critical Discourse Analysis to explore the strategies in the selected hymns. The data were purposively derived from the two hymnists: Bola Ilori and Esther Laosebikan, one hymn each titled “Lord, let your blessings attend us” and The Lord is King arrayed in majesty”, was purposively selected with the discuss issues of supplication and praise/worship respectively. The analysis revealed that ethno-sentential strategies such as Africanized imagery, collectivization, language indigenization, culturocentrism, hybridization among others characterized African hymns. The findings further revealed that both hymnists use almost similar structural elements such as imperative sentences and comparative phrases, but different in tone, emphasis and imagery. This study concluded that there is an intersection of linguistic features, ethnosentential strategies and discursive dynamics in religious discourse, with focus on hymnody to uncover the complex ways in which language shapes and reflects cultural, social and theological identities.