SOCIOLINGUISTICS ANALYSIS OF IGBO PROVERBS AND IDIOMS

                                               ABSTRACT

Language is a powerful tool in human communication. Culture is also an important aspect in human life. Language is a product of culture. The failure to discover culture as the strongest guide in the universality of language use among individual language users in a connected speech within a particular speech community is a waste that has hindered against the appropriate use of language in today’s society. This is as a result of the fact that language and culture are inseperable. Proverbs and idioms are products of the human cultures because they are witty statements loaded with absolute truths. This research examines the sociolinguistic analysis of Igbo proverbs and idioms. Its goal is to investigate Igbo proverbs and idioms from a Sociolinguistics view in the context of English as a second language in Nigeria. This will go a long way to provide a Sociolinguistics insight to the contributions of Igbo language, culture and way of life in the sociolinguistic context of English as a second language. The data for this research was acquired and collected orally from competent Igbo native speakers from the context of use and also from the web. The qualitative and analytic research designs were adopted for the analysis. Thirty five (35) proverbs and Thirty five (35) idioms were analyzed using J.L Austin’s Speech Act Theory as the major analytical framework.