The Pragmatics of Film Language and Sentence in the Creation of African Myths in Nigerian Movies: An Evaluation of Obi Emelonye’s The Mirror Boy

Abstract

<table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tbody><tr><td colspan="3" width="618"><p align="center"> </p></td></tr><tr><td width="168"><p align="center"> </p></td><td width="265"><p align="center"> </p></td><td width="186"><p align="center"> </p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="3" valign="top" width="618"><p>African myths or mythological reality of African extractions is one major source of raw materials the Nigerian movie industry popularly called Nollyword explores as an avenue for generating content for their films. Mythological realities like the appearance of the dead, re-incarnation, potency of the gods, life after death, the communion between the living and the dead and many more often times are represented in the Nigerian movies. Art evidently is a representation of the people’s culture. It is also a vehicle through which the people’s culture is driven. Myths are part of African culture and their efficacy in the preservation and sustenance of Nigerian culture appears to be the reason why the representation of mythological reality in Nigerian films has become a recurring decimal. It appears that the representation of mythological reality in Nigeria movies is yet to attain a level where the audience will be submerged into the world of the myths. This is because the potential audience has a consciousness and a preconceived idea of how these characters should be represented due to the archetypal nature of mythical characters. The audience should not through these representations have doubts over the potency of the African and Nigerian myths. To achieve this level of reality in the depiction of mythological reality, this chapter advocates for a pragmatic utilisation of the film sentence and language. The Mirror Boy released in 2011 a film by Obi Emelonye is used as case study to establish the roles of film language and sentence in the representation of mythological reality.</p></td></tr></tbody></table>