“QJ[ ANAGH[ ASX ASXSX QZQ”1: APPRAISING THE CULTURAL INSISTENCE ON THE EXCLUSIVE USE OF IGBO LANGUAGE WITHIN THE AMBIENCE OF IGBO KOLA RITUAL CEREMONY

Abstract

The work is a justification for the cultural insistence on Igbo language as the exclusive language for the kola ritual symbolism. It uses the method of hermeneutics and analysis in its elucidation. The work’s point of departure is that a hermeneutics of the Igbo kola symbolism shows that it projects their cultural existential postulates about their world. The work does not argue for an intrinsic connection between qj[ ritual and Igbo language because that would be a hard stance to defend. Again, it does not go to the extent of arguing that Igbo language is indispensable in maintaining Igbo identity. The researcher rather takes his argument from the point of view that if kola ritual symbolically depicts the Igbo world and Igbo as a people then Igbo language which reveals the personality, the genius, the interests, the ideals and sentiments of the Igbo people may be the right candidate. It further argues that the insistence is a symbolic response to an existential threat occasioned by the history of colonization which has helped to forge a certain subtractive model of bilingualism fuelled by the denigration of Igbo language, an unfortunate situation that has marked Igbo language as an endangered species. The line of the argument is not just about the salience of language on the cultural world and identity of a people but rather from the point of view that every language portrays a perspective of the world, a unique way of seeing the world and being human. What is being harped here is that language is not just a cultural value belonging to a people, it is also a global-cosmic value, for it adds to the richness of the world taken holistically. Thus, when a language dies, then a form of symbolism is gone together with all the layers of meaning that it carries and local resources it houses. There is in fact a diminution of reality and knowledge, and so an impoverishment of the world. This is the reason that for the present work, efforts whether symbolically or ordinarily made to preserve a language and so prevent the death must be encouraged and applauded.