Hausa Proverbs as a Dynamic Mode of Discourse between Tradition and Modernity

Abstract

Proverbs are very common and employed in African societies, especially in Hausa. They arise in the midst of conversation. They are used for many purposes, in numerous circumstances and ways that, in many African societies, effective speech and social success depend on a good command of proverbs Usman et al. (2013). As such they held a very important place in traditional societies; dynamic mode of discourse, proverbs is also used as a major vehicle of transmission from generation to generation as people could not read and write. But, learning colonial languages (French, English, Portuguese) imposes to new generation the acquisition of new communicative competence. Consequently, new generation has no good command of their native language let alone proverbs whereas modern society is characterized by quick communication which gives no more room to proverbs. There have been many studies on topics related to the use, role, form, characteristic and functions of Hausa proverbs. To the best knowledge of the researcher no study was conducted regarding Hausa proverbs in traditional vis-à-vis modern society. That is what the paper tries to investigate in an attempt of filling up the gap. Participants were chosen through random sampling method while unstructured interview and surreptitious observation were used to collect data. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to analyse data. Analysis reveals that Hausa new generation is no more competent in their language in that they code switch, code mix or even borrow when communicating let alone use of proverbs. Still in use in traditional societies, proverbs are drastically threatened to falling in disuse in modern societies.