Lucia N. Omondi Dholuo Emotional Language
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Lucia N. Omondi Dholuo Emotional Language: An Overview Series A: General & Theoretical Papers ISSN 1435-6473 Essen: LAUD 1995 (2nd ed. with divergent page numbering 2007) Paper No. 361 Universität Duisburg-Essen Lucia N. Omondi Dholuo Emotional Language: An Overview Copyright by the author Reproduced by LAUD 1995 (2nd ed. with divergent page numbering 2007) Linguistic Agency Series A University of Duisburg-Essen General and Theoretical FB Geisteswissenschaften Paper No. 361 Universitätsstr. 12 D- 45117 Essen Order LAUD-papers online: http://www.linse.uni-due.de/linse/laud/index.html Or contact: [email protected] Lucia N. Omondi Dholuo Emotional Language: An Overview 1. Introduction: Setting and Definitions 1.1 Geographical Setting of Dholuo Dholuo is an African language spoken by a few million (4?) people who basically live on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria mainly in the Republic of Kenya. There is, however, a small population in the Mara region of the Republic of Tanzania. As might be expected in the volatile world society of today, the speakers of the language who are called joluo (sing. jaluo) can be found in other parts of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, and even beyond, especially in the major cities of the world. The language is classified as Western Nilotic of the Nilotic subbranch of the Sudanic family of the Chan-Nile of the Nilo-Saharan unit of African languages (Greenberg 1970:85-148). This means that as a Western Nilotic language, it is very closely related to the languages such as Acholi, Langi, Alur, Padhola etc. of Uganda and Shilluk, Annak, Nuer, etc. of Sudan. As a Nilotic language it is closely related to the other Nilotic languages such as Maasai, Kalenjin, Turkana, etc. in Kenya, and the other Nilotic languages of Uganda and the Sudan like Bari, Dinka, etc. 1.2 Language and non-verbal Communication Perhaps it should not be necessary to worry about defining the term language. However, for reasons that will become clearer later we find it orientationally necessary to consolidate our understanding of the phenomenon. Ordinarily, when people, especially linguists, talk about a language like English, Kiswahili or Dholuo, there is a tendency to be referring to what 1 call microlanguage: the vocal sounds systematically organised into words, phrases and sentences and characteristically studied at the levels of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics in the science called linguistics. We may well be right that this verbal language constitutes the core of any system for communication in a speech community that we call language. But when we consider and observe how speech communities use their language in all aspects of their life, it becomes obvious that the verbal system is only an abstracted part of a larger and more complex system a large part of which still defies our understanding and the rigour required of scientific analysis. Every speech community, for example has a stock of paralinguistic signs as defined in Omondi (1979) which they use independently or together with the verbal signs in their communication. Similarly, each speech community has a stock of ready-made expressions that function efficiently as signs in their linguistic, or even verbal communication: A metaphor here, a riddle there, an allusion to an epic or a folk tale often communicates a message sometimes 1 even more effectively than a verbal code ever could. To that extent, a metaphor such as "Time is money" is as much a part of the English language as the word boy. By the same token, a paralinguistic verbal symbol such as ouch is part of the English language. We therefore can talk of Macro-English, which would include all these exclamation forms besides the English sounds that organise conventionally into morphemes, words etc. A human language is thus a phenomenon made up of signs, symbols and expressions, the outer boundary of which is yet to be determined. Whatever that boundary, however, as we observe human language in use, the words organised into sentences is only a part of it. 1.3 Emotion as a culture-specific Concept The word emotion is rather like the term language: it is supposedly well known to the extent that its use can be taken for granted, yet it is very difficult to define and even more difficult to delineate. What is an emotion? Or what are emotions? Characteristically, the difficulty in defining emotions as an English word is often circumvented by falling back on definition by example. The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English defines emotion as a "strong feeling of any kind" but quickly proceeds to say "Love, joy, hate, fear and jealousy are all emotions." By implication, it further attempts to define emotion as an antonym to the "mind" when it uses the word in the sentence "The speaker appealed to our emotions rather than to our minds". Language Dictionary of Contemporary English similarly defines emotion as "any of the strong feelings of the human spirit" - and adds that "love, hatred, grief are emotions" This sentential example implies that emotion is the antonym of reason: "This speech had an effect on our emotions rather than our reason". The Chambers English Dictionary goes a little further than the others as it enters emotion as "... a moving of the feelings: agitation of the mind: one of the three groups of the phenomenon of the mind- feeling, distinguished from cognition and will." This helps one to build a semantic field for emotion in which it contrasts with cognition and the will. What conies out is that emotion is an experience or is something to be experienced by the human being. Secondly, there is an attempt to locate the experiences somewhere within the human dimensions of body, mind and soul. Thirdly, as the opposite of reason, emotion is a feeling, an experience not controlled by the will. The idea is that what are termed love, hatred or grief in English are intense feelings triggered off from some seat other than the seat of reason or of other cognitively and/or physically premised experiences. If we steer off the rather metaphysical issues of such definitions, we can, like the dictionaries, identify what we mean by examples and proceed. 1.4 Emotional Language in Leech's Classification Emotional language would then be language which is somehow related to emotions. The relationship might be that of denotation. There is the language that names or refers to the emotions; so love and hate are parts of an emotional language because they name emotions. 2 Secondly, the relationship might be one of expression: we would then be talking about the language in which the feelings named are expressed by speakers of the language. When a person A feels what we name hatred, how does she express it? In other words, emotional language is essentially a semantically defined aspect of language: It is defined according to the meaning of the piece of language. Within the scheme proposed by Leech (1974:10-27), which consists of seven types of meaning, emotional language would fall within his fourth type, which he calls "affective meaning", which… (p. 18) "....is often explicitly conveyed through the conceptual or connotative content of the words used." To this extent, emotional language is that language which by virtue of its conceptual, connotative, or even stylistic content or association gives affective meaning or defines any of the emotions. Still, there are words which conceptually mean what is understood to be emotions, and are therefore closely associated with affective meaning, as Leech says (1974: 18): Affective meaning is largely a parasitic category in the sense that to express our emotions we rely upon the mediation of other categories of meaning.... Looking at the functions of language in society, Leech further claims that language has five functions in society: these he lists as informational, expressive, directive, aesthetic, and phatic. Hence, in as far as emotions are feelings, emotional language would be according to Leech's scheme, expressive - and one might add, expressive of the speaker or writer's feelings and attitudes. But again, there is an inevitable overlap because in as much as a speaker or writer can use language denoting emotions to express her feelings, it is often easily possible to express even the same emotions, using words and sentences whose basic content might be designated as informational, directive, or even phatic. For the purpose of this paper therefore, we are going to understand emotional language as that language which either by its meaning or its function in use, expresses any of the emotions we shall identify. In other words, we want to answer the question "How do the joluo express their emotions using their language in the macro-sense of language as defined above? 2. Dholuo Emotional Language 2.1 Suprasegmentals Expressing Emotions To begin with, even before looking for special language which is associated with emotions, it needs to be understood that Dholuo, perhaps like any other language, always has the potential for the expression of emotions in virtually every use of the language (cf. Leech). One might even go further and venture to suggest that every linguistic act has an emotional dimension in that it expresses the user's feelings and evaluation. Feeling is an inherent part of all linguistic expression. These feelings and judgements may be distinguished from what is usually regarded as emotions in that they may not be strong feelings as the dictionaries define emotions. However, this difference is more a matter of degree than of great 3 substance. This is partially in the nature of the emotions themselves. For instance, the emotion named anger can be felt to range from mild disapproval or discomfort with a situation to utter wild rage that might border on insanity.