The Proverb in the Context of Akan Rhetoric
A Theory of Proverb Praxis
Published in December 1989
Book
Paperback/Softback
316 pages
978-3-261-03873-9 (ISBN)
Description
This book presents a comprehensive ethnography of proverb communication in an African culture and achieves a significant breakthrough in proverb studies. The author critically reviews certain stereotypical notions about the proverb with regard to its creative potential, authorship and effectiveness in crisis management. The proverb is portrayed here as a dynamic communicative strategy, in which form, meaning and logic are in constant flux. The study, which focuses on the Akan of Ghana, situates the proverb in the heart of real life discourse interactions and monitors its rhetorical efficacy on the basis of indigenous aesthetics. The book should be of value to folklorists, sociolinguists, anthropologists, literary scholars and students of communications.
Reviews / Votes
«Kwesi Yankahs Studie...darf vorbehaltlos als eine Perle der Sprichwörterforschung bezeichnet werden.(...) Die eigentliche Faszination dieses Werkes liegt in der Kombination von theoretischer Einsicht und ethnographischen Beobachtungen.» (Regina Bendix, Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde)«This work provides the most thorough understanding of the meaning of this particular speech form in the culture, thereby contributing to a fuller understanding of the whole process of cognition and negotiation, and to concepts of the self in Akan. It thus contributes to the understanding of Akan culture as much as to that of rhetoric and speech performance. (...) Yankah's work is equally important to West African scholars.» (B.J.Stoeltje, Journal of Folklore Research)
«øA! brilliant work. Yankah is to be commended for this study, important not only for proverb lore but also for Africanist studies that deal with methodological problems of general interest to Comparative Literature.» (Patrick Kobina Kilson, Recherche Littéraire)