Department: Linguistics African and European Languages
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1
Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices: An Investigation of Social Codes in Buchi Emecheta’s The Bride Price
The paper analyses social codes in Buchi Emecheta’s The Bride Price. By adopting Hall’s Constructivist Approach of semiotic analysis, it surveys the public and social character of language. The paper draws an insight from the underlying argument behind the semiotic approach that, since all cultural objects convey meaning, and all cultural practices depend on meaning, they must make use of signs; and insofar as they do, they must work like language works, and be amenable to an analysis which basically makes use of Saussure’s linguistic concepts. In understanding the text under review therefore, we draw on a repertoire of textual and social codes. Analyses of these are classified and are seen to portray social communication as it deals with the relations between people, and consequently implicates sender and receiver. Specific findings include preference for the male child, conflict of religious ideologies, commercialization and relegation of the female child, nicknaming, and other codes of polite behaviour as well as few paralinguistic features. These are ways of communicating, by means of which the individuals in the text define themselves in relation to the group and the group in relation to society. The paper concludes that the governing semiotic principle is cyclical as characters take turns in varying signifying practices to fan the ember of a chauvinistic tradition.
Key words: codes, signs, culture, representation, tradition, communication
