The Significance of The Choice of Diction In The S’wamba Folksongs of The People of Edina Traditional Area, Ghana.
Keywords:
folksongs, translation, S’wamba, songs, dictionAbstract
S’wamba is a collection of terse slow-paced antiphonal traditional folk songs performed by the people of Edina in the Central Region of Ghana. This verbal art of the people is expressed in work songs, play songs, traditional verses, riddles, stories and prayers, but the folk song, from the researchers’ observation is arguably the most popular of their oral forms. The folksong owes its popularity among the people to the fact that it is found in almost every aspect of their lives since almost every significant event is celebrated in song. The study sought to find out how suggestive references in the diction of the song texts are used to communicate ideas to enrich meaning. The study combined the use of both purposive sampling and random sampling methods to select respondents to reach the well-informed among the informants who were contacted for information on the songs. The deconstructive literary theory was adopted. In all, fifty (50) songs were recorded, transcribed, translated and analysed. After the analyses, it was revealed that the S’wamba folk is poetic because the pithy and terse references used in the diction of S’wamba song texts grant the few words of the song texts with layers of meaning and this in turn lends the song texts to different literary approaches of interpretation like any good poetry.
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