The Oral Tradition: Achebe’s Linguistic Legacy

Abstract

One of the outstanding linguistic legacies of Achebe in the founding and development of African Literature is his style of oral tradition. The evidence of this linguistic heritage and legacy in his oeuvre is overt and manifest everywhere for the deaf to hear and the blind to see. No scholar or researcher will conduct any inquiry into Achebe’s writings without giving worthwhile attention to his oral tradition. Indeed, there is disconnect or lacuna in African Literature without incorporation of the style of oral tradition. The implicature of this assertion is that African literary writers writing on the African continent today drew sufficientinspiration from Achebe in one way or the other in his linguistic legacy of oral tradition. In view of this, this essay seeks to conduct a modest study into Achebe’s oral traditionin order to ascertain and document its realms. The ramification of oral tradition covers conversational style, oral performances such as song poems or lyric poetry, folklore or folktales, riddles, proverbs, alliterative and assonance renditions, prayers and incantations, histories, legends, dramatic performances discernible in certain festivals, oratorical manifestations, idioms, as well as other nuances of speech and language habit and patterns of thought. These features are linguistic evidence which encapsulate our cultural treasures. We will use Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God and No Longer at Ease, to be referred to as TFA, AOG and NLAE, respectively, as representative texts with which to excavate some of the linguistic evidence of oral tradition in African Literature as bequeathed by Chinua Achebe.