A critical discourse account of the process of ideological expressions in the Ẹdo (Bini) guilds

1 Introduction

The term ideology is often used in conjunction with that of identity in the literature. The two concepts of ideology and identity represent an interesting area of extensive researches in the social sciences and cultural studies, particularly since the late 1980s, where there has hardly been an academic book or article published in the aforementioned fields without some reference to the terms. This is the case as illustrated in a publication by the sociologist Brubaker (2004) who identified five main uses of the concept in various academic disciplines. In the study of race, ethnicity and nationalism, for instance, identity is most often used to emphasize either objective or subjective ‘sameness’ among a collectivity, whereby this feeling ‘is expected to manifest itself in solidarity, in shared dispositions or consciousness, or in collective action’ (2004: 34). In psychology as well as in nationalism studies, the term is commonly understood as ‘a core aspect of (individual or collective) self-hood or as a fundamental condition of social being’, which ‘is invoked to point to something allegedly deep, basic, abiding, or foundational’ (Brubaker 2004: 34).

The study of ideology falls within the tenets of power and supremacy in sociolinguistics and represents the major theme of ethnolinguistic investigations (Tajfel 1974, 1978). It has been treated as the socio-psychological theory of social processes (Capozza and Brown 2000). The paper in line with the position above, investigates the Ẹdo guild system with reference to the socio-cultural concept of ideology. The paper examines the discourse patterns of the guilds in the Ẹdo society in the course of intergroup relation (the guilds as a unity) with a view to discerning the ideological structure of the Ẹdo people. The Ẹdo (Benin) society is highly structured and compartmentalized in a hierarchical order with the ọ̀mọ́ Ne Ọba ‘Monarch’ at the centre of political, socio-cultural and economic administration. The ọ̀mọ́ Ne Ọba and his chiefs constitute the principal administrative organ at the centre based in the Ogbe quarters of Benin City (the setting of the present study) while other towns and villages are administered by Enigie ‘Dukes’ (Sing. Enogie ‘Duke’). Sometimes in the absence of an Enogie, an Ọdiọnwere (eldest man) becomes the administrator of such a village or town. These people owe allegiance to the ọ̀mọ́ Ne Ọba and his chiefs in Benin City.

Ẹdo is the name of the language spoken by the people under the present study with historical connection to other languages now called ‘Ẹdoid’. This language was classified by Greenberg (1963) as a member of the ‘Kwa’ branch of the ‘Niger-Congo’ phylum and by Elugbe (1986) as a member of the ‘Central-Ẹdoid’ group of languages. This classification by Greenberg (1963) above was modified later by Williamson and Blench (2000) as the West-Benue-Congo under the South-Volta-Congo (Proto-Benue-Kwa) phylum.

Edo is a state in Nigeria with Benin City as capital. It is made up of four major ethnic groups; namely Edo (Benins), Esan, Owan and Etsako. However the State has a high presence of residents from across the country and the world because of its cosmopolitan tendencies. Benin City the capital has a history of being one of the foremost destinations of Europeans during their exploration of the African continent many centuries ago. Some of the flash points have remained enviable tourists’ attractions for the state (Agheyisi 1986).

The Mid-Western Region was a division of Nigeria from 1963 to 1991, being known as the Bendel state from 1976. It was formed in June 1963 from Benin and Delta provinces of the Western Region, and its capital was Benin City. It was renamed a province in 1966, and in 1967 when the other provinces were split up into several states, it remained territorially intact, becoming a state. With an estimated population of 3,218,332 made up of 1,640,461 males and 1,577,871 females and a growth rate of 2.7% per annum, as well as a total landmass of 19,187 square kilometers, the state has a population density of about 168 persons per square kilometres (Oluya 2012).

The Ẹdo (Benin) people are distributed over an area of 10,371 square miles and presently occupy the seven local government areas of Edo State which constitute the Edo South Senatorial District. They are:

1. Egọ, with headquarters at Uselu

2. Ikpoba-Ọkha, with headquarters at Idogbo

3. Orẹdo, with headquarters in Benin City

4. Orhiọnmwọ, with headquarters at Abudu

5. Ọvia-North-East, with headquarters at Okada

6. Ọvia-South-West, with headquarters at Iguobazuwa

7. Uhunmwọdẹ, with headquarters at Ehor

2 Approaches to ideological expressions

The concept of language ideology has its origin in the North American Linguistic Anthropology as a framework within which to explore the “mediating links between social forms and forms of talk” (Johnson and Milani 2010: 4). This concept has gained a wider audience in linguistic investigation and a few of these are examined here.

Haviland (2003: 765) treats language ideology as ‘the structural and conceptual diversity of languages and understood as codes, which are elaborately structured devices for representing different physical, social and cultural realities and hence potential vehicles for expressing and reproducing conceptual differences among group of speakers’. He treats the different views of language as held by different authors within the mind-brain orientation as instances of language ideologies. This will then imply that language ideologies or ideas with which participants and observers frame their understanding of linguistic varieties, and map those understanding unto people, events and activities that are significant to them.

Hunjo (2010) examines Soyinka’s discursive foregrounding of resistance ideologies in his non-fictional texts to raise consciousness for genuine decolonisation of Nigeria’s democracy. It examined Soyinka’s deployment of metaphor, intersexuality, lexicalization, passivisation and transitivity to account for his handling of the discourse. He argues that the knowledge of how political processes are represented with linguistic features such as lexicalisation, passivisation, metaphor and intertextuality in texts describe ideologies contextualized for exactly this purpose.

Johnson and Milani (2010: 4) are of the opinion that language ideology is ‘a mental schemata, or framework of social cognition and how these cognitive patterns end up in people’s mind as a collective phenomenon. They went on to show how linguistic phenomena are invested with meanings and values through the reproduction, production and contestation of conventional indexical ties between the following:

1. perceived or presumed features, genres styles or varieties of language, and

2. broader cultural representations of their purported speakers in terms of nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, aesthetics, morality and others (Johnson and Milani 2010: 4).

In the conceptualization of ideology among political actors in the Nigerian election scene, Osisanwo (2011) investigates the ways the cover stories in two Nigerian news magazine, Tell and The News, linguistically and visually, express the ideological pursuits of social actors in the 2003 and 2007 general elections in Nigeria. He adopts Fairclough and van Dijk’s models of critical discourse analysis, complemented by Halliday’s systemic functional grammar, Leuwen’s representation of social actors, and Kress and Leuwen’s representation and interaction theory on reading images as theoretical frameworks.

He found out that the discourse of the stories indicated an attempt to shape the perspective of readers in election. That both magazines examined used linguistic tools to represent their ideological affiliations, that is, election in Nigeria is a dirty game and politicians are insincere.He therefore concludes that the knowledge of how both magazines use linguistic patterns and visuals to represent social actors aid the discovery of ideologies. The magazines’ representation of electoral issues, realised through linguistic processes and visual strategies, plays a fundamental role in the propagation and perpetuation of implicit and dominant ideologies.

Ideology of language is not about language alone; rather it is about the ties of language to identity, to aesthetics, to morality and epistemology. Based on this, language ideology not only involves linguistic forms but also the idea of a person and a social group, and such fundamental social institutions as religious rituals, child socialization and gender relations. This reflects the scope of the present paper based on our conception of the guild’s ideology along religious and ritual lines with a direct link to the centre of the socio-cultural existence of the Edo people.

In the realm of the expression of ideologized gender distinction in Nigerian literatures, Ezeife (2014) investigates the gender issues, contextual beliefs and lexical indices that characterize gender ideologies in selected Nigerian novels in order to determine the ideological contents expressed through vocabulary choices. She identifies nine gender issues in all the texts which were: family, divorce, legal system, marriage, relationships, career, age, widowhood and female trafficking. She equally identified two classes of ideologies in all the text: patriarchal and feminist.

She concludes that Nigerian novelists deploy gender issues with situated lexemes in portraying patriarchal and feminist ideologies. Therefore, understanding gender ideologies in Nigerian novels requires background knowledge of the lexical resources which novelists draw upon in their discourse.

The issue of linguistic differentiation has also been treated as the core of language ideologies and practices of speakers (Hollington 2015). Language ideologies comprise all sorts of ideas, practices and beliefs about a language, linguistic practices and speech forms and in turn it relates to attitudes of speakers, identity, aesthetics and epistemology (Schieffelin et al. 1998). It can therefore be viewed and treated as the intersection of the different social factors that create distinction in a language and a society.

According to Hollington (2016: 16), “ideology is one of the main motivators of distinctiveness, identity and language change”. They have great influence on linguistics and social practices and represent a driving force of language manipulation. He came up with this position in his examination of Ethiopian youth language practices and ideology where he noted the issue of linguistic differentiation and style as the practices adopted by the youth in creating their own code of communication ‘Yarada K’wank’wa’. This is as a result of the ideology of association or solidarity and dissociation (differentiation). He posits that “consciousness plays an important role in many linguistic practices which is amply demonstrated by the creations of Yarada K’wank’wa speakers” (pg. 139).

Language ideology has also been seen as social practices, which are embedded in one’s social world by some scholars. For instance Bourdieu (1991: 89) argues that:

Not only are linguistic features never clearly separated from the speakers’ whole set of properties (bodily lexis, physiognomy cosmetics, clothing) but phonological (or lexical, or any other) features are never clearly separated from other levels of language.

This position was re-echoed by Irvine (2001), who claims that ideology can also be related to a style while the linguistic practices associated with it may be called stylect. Style is also distinctive and may constitute an aspect of language variation. Linguistic distinctiveness, arising from linguistic differentiation, derives, to some degree, from local ideologies of language and the principle of distinctiveness that links language differences with social meanings.

In the context of post-colonial judicial adjudications of the juvenile welfare court system in Nigeria, Bolade (2017) examines the discourse features of the juvenile welfare court in Ibadan in the light of the contextual situation, interactional structure and participant roles. This was done with a view to establishing the bipartite nature of adjudicatory proceedings in the post-colonial Nigeria context. The researcher observed in her findings that the juvenile court was characterized by conflict and culture where the former were resolved by the latter. She concludes that the juvenile welfare court, Ibadan despite its restrictive formal conventions, adjudicates by cultural values.

The overriding implication of these different views of ideology is that it is a property of language bestowed by the social setting where such a language is used. It is a socio-mental phenomenon linked to the use of language in any human society and exists as a sort of code, morals, values and regulation governing language use and which every member of such a society is expected to be conversant with. It is therefore the opinion of this study that ideology is a feature of language bestowed by the cultural precepts of the society by which individual’s linguistic orientations are transformed to conform to certain norms of language use.

On Critical Discourse, van Dijk (2016), socio-cognitive representation is not an individually held mental model (not based on the psychological orientation of an individual) but of cognitive structures shared by members of a particular group. This will in turn construct such a group as socially and discursively constructed in the course of communication, establish social ideologies and relations by being communicated and are the subject of continual transformation through the activities of intergroup interactions. The focus of this model is therefore on a group of individuals as opposed to a single individual with a shared trait (as in the case of the guild system) and mental orientation.

He is often referred to as the most referenced and quoted authority in critical discourse analysis (Sheyholislami 2001). The research foray of van Dijk started in the 1980s when he started to apply his theory to media texts with emphasis on the representation of ethnic groups and minorities in Europe. He advocated for a thorough analysis not only of the textual and structural levels of media discourse but also for analysis and explanations at the production and comprehension levels. By structural analysis, he advocated examination of linguistic structures at various levels of description which is not only the grammatical, phonological, morphological and semantic levels but also higher level properties such as coherence, overall themes and topics of news stories and the whole schematic forms and rhetorical dimension of texts. According to him, structural analysis may not suffice however because: “discourse is not simply an isolated textual or dialogic structure. Rather it is a complex communicative event that also embodies a social context featuring participants (and their properties) as well as production and reception presses” (van Dijk 1988a, 1988b: 2).

2.1 Theoretical orientation

We adopt for the purpose of analysis, the socio-cognitive model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The proponents of the socio-cognitive approach to discourse analysis are van Dijk (2009) and Chilton (2005). The socio-cognitive approach was initially conceived of as an analytic tool for group social identities but will be modified in the present study to accommodate the ideological dimension we are evaluating with the aid of CDA. This method of socio-cognitive representation (henceforth SCR) combines with Fairclough (2003, 2005 socio-cultural representation to produce the following analytic parameter to be employed in this study.

van Dijk is one of the leading figures and pioneers of study and research in domain of CDA. Most of his critical works are concerned with prejudice and racism in discourse. In his early works, he has considered the problem that how Netherlander and Californian Caucasians talk about ethnic minorities, and what role do these conversations play in the reproduction of ideology. In fact, analysis of the topics that people talk about represents the things that exist in their minds. In Van Dijk’s viewpoint, those things are mental and personal tenets about ethnic events. He believes that the major premise in talking about others includes positive self-representation and negative other-representation.

In doing CDA, Van Dijk offers some practical principles and guidelines and asserts that he has no special school or approach. This paper will in the course of presenting the different texts of the guilds discourse, critically evaluate the discourses of the guilds in order to illuminate the ideological components of their activities in the Ẹdo society. As one of the models of CDA, different socio-cultural expressions (discourses that are socially grounded and culturally regulated) will be sampled and the different linguistic strategies employed discussed.

One of the principal motivations for employing the socio-cognitive model of CDA in the present research has to do with the conception of discourse analysis here as ideological analysis (van Dijk 1990) which is the principal theme covered by this approach in the study. According to van Dijk, ideologies are typically though not exclusively expressed and reproduced in discourse and communication, including non-verbal semiotic messages, such as pictures, photographs and movies (1995: 17). He therefore proposed a three parts or dimension to ideological analysis which are: social analysis, cognitive analysis and discourse analysis as represented by the schema below (Figure 1):

Figure 1:

The socio-cognitive model of CDA.

Taking our stand from a CDA point of view, language does not possess power per se. It takes its power from the powerful people who make use of it. This is the very reason that why, in a majority of cases, critical linguists pick the view of deprived people and set out to analyze language critically, because those who are in power are responsible of the social inequalities. Power does not derive from language; rather language is used to fight against power.

3 Methodology

Data for this study were collected through in-depth interviews and observation. As a result of the fact that the identified population for the study was too large given the scope of the present study and time frame, a selected representation of the target population was adopted. The sample which is a representation of the totality of the research population (3,000 members of the different guilds) reflects the characteristics of the whole in this regard. Due to the aforementioned constrain, and in order to meet our research objectives, a total of thirty-five (35) persons were purposively selected as the sample population. Of this number, five were purposively selected based on their positions in the guilds for an indepth interview (two each from Igun Ẹrọnmwọ and Èmátọ̀n each and one from Ogbelaka), the reason for this being that these guilds possess two hierarchy of leadership, the supervisor (a Chief in this case) and a political leader, an Ọdiọnwere ‘oldest man’ in that order. As for Igun Ẹrọnmwọ and Igun Ematọn/Ugbọha, the two categories of leadership were consulted while for Igun Ogbelaka, the supervisor also happens to be the political leader and as such, one person was interviewed giving rise to the unbalanced figure of five mentioned above. In addition to this, ten members each from the three guilds were observed in their workshop doing their casting, smelting and (for ogbelaka) meetings and songs recitation with their respective leaders in attendance.

The data obtained from the study were first of all organized into two sets: the interview transcript and the extract of recorded interaction through direct observation. The latter of this was presented on a clause by clause basis after transcription. We employed for the simplification of analysis, the GAT (discourse and conversation analytic transcription system) which is used for noting the wordings and prosody of natural everyday talk-in-interaction (Auer et al. 2015). This method entails the representation of interactional and talk-in-interaction data employing the standard orthography of the linguistic community such was obtained from. The transcribed information was analyzed in two ways resulting from the different research instruments employed. In the first instance, interview data were analyzed using the method of discourse analysis where focus was on identifying expressions that reflect the ideology and social status/power of the guilds examined. This was closely followed by the description; discussion/evaluation of the different responses in line with the principles of van Dijk’s socio-cognitive representation model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was adopted for our investigation. This theory was adopted in such a way that the ideological issues in the study could be properly evaluated in a step-wise procedure schematized below (Table 1).

These parameters as modified in this study will serve as the basis for the analysis of the ideological dimension of the research in order to fully account for the linguistic expression of ideology in the guilds’ discourse. The ideological dimension to this study was drawn from the central tenet of CDA that discourses entail ideological work in that participants draw on linguistic resources to encode combinations of beliefs, values, norms, goals and emotions.

4 Linguistic strategies for ideological expressions in the guilds

As mentioned in the introductory section of this chapter, the focus of this aspect of our investigation is the different expressions and linguistic devices portraying the ideological orientation of the guilds in the Ẹdo society. In this section therefore, such focus will be on such elements of socio-cognitive representation like relational modality, honorifics, indexicality and order of discourse.

4.1 Relational modality

This is one of the modalities for discourse analysis as advocated by Fairclough (2005) and it involves the dissection of interaction along different socio-cultural lines based on the relationship between interactants. The exploration of ideological expression serves as the backdrop to the composition of this section with the socio-cognitive model of CDA as a benchmark for this. The ideological orientation of the larger Ẹdo society and those of the guilds are typically expressed by a variety of linguistic strategies. One of the linguistic strategies associated with this is the concept of relationality modality which was proposed by Fairclough but which is modified in this study as a socio-cognitive representation due to the mentalistic nature of this model of ideological analysis. The relationality modality typically expresses the relations of authority and that of personality in a social group as manifested in the discourse of such a group. This tool of CDA exploration employ such linguistic elements as the modal auxiliary verbs, adverbials and honorifics to portray such ideological orientation as, solidarity, leadership hierarchy and commonality as the case may be. This position can be aptly captured by means of the schema designed for this study to capture the link between discourse, ideology and social context below (Figure 2):

Figure 2:

The discourse flow chart.

This is a model of ideological expression that demonstrates the inverse link between discourse structure and discourse participants on the one hand and social context and discourse participants on the other hand. The manifestation of this socio-cognitive model of discourse orientation will suffice from the examination of some of the discourse of the guilds obtained for this study. Consider the following sample of expressions as an instant of this representation.

Excerpt 1

Ávbé t̀am̀a érhá ọ́ghé ímà ghẹ́ ọ̀khaẹ̀mwẹ̀ Ínẹ́ nè ọ́ yá lá kòdẹ́ ké òdẹ́ wẹ́ ọ̀ khẹ́ké nè ọ̀ ná ré ènọ́nwárẹ̀n nè ọ́ yá ékhọ́è ènọ́nwárẹ̀n yà mù òtù nà khìán nè ìmà níí kẹ́rè miẹ̀ èkè ná ghá lélè ẹ̀rè khián vbọ́ rhùnmwùdá íghó nè á yá rrìé èvbàré ùkpó níí ọ̀ má hàá ẹ̀rè gbá, àwàrọ́kpá níí ọ́ná ghì khàré wẹ́ íghó níí ìrẹ̀n ghá hà ẹ̀ré vbè ẹ̀ghẹ̀ nè ẹ́ khìán kpẹ́ gbé ò.

“We also told our father, Chief Inẹ to employ every means possible as he is an elder in the group to use the mind of an elder in heading this group. This will make it possible for the rest of us to follow in his footsteps because he is yet to pay his dues for the past year though he has currently assured us that he will pay everything in no distant time”.

An examination of the different components of this discourse will reveal the following: that the head (supervisor) of this guild is affectionately referred to as érhá ọ́ghé ima ‘our father’. In the presentation of the fact that he is yet to pay his dues/levies unlike other ordinary members of the group, a more polite appeal is made to him thus ne ọ́ nà re ènọ́nwárẹ̀n ‘as he is an elder’ and ye ékhọ́è ọ́ghé enọnmwarẹn ‘use the mind/wisdom of an elder’. This is a strategy to soft pedal on the accusation of indebtedness which is against the rule of the guilds, by the chief heading it. In this way, by placing the head as an elder, he is expected to behave as such by being an example of order and adherence to the rules of the group. As a result of this polite appeal/presentation, the chief promised to pay up even why the deliberations were still on. This therefore represents one of the several instances of relationality in terms of appeal to a particular authority and an instance of the employment of varied linguistic devices for the dissemination of ideological orientation. Another instance of this is illustrated by means of another discourse extract as seen below.

Excerpt 2

Èmítìn òkàrò ẹ̀rè nà khín, ọ̀mwá nè ọ́ nà èrhùnmwù ne a yá kie owa keghi re ọtẹn ima ighẹ Ìkpọ̀nmwósà nè ọ́ nà re èmítìn òkàrò vbè ùkpó nà, à má rré rré suẹ́n rhùnmwùdá èmwá níí bún má rré rre rré vbè íràn má rẹ́n ghẹ́ ẹ́rẹ́ nà ẹ̀rè èmítìn suẹ́nrẹ́n.

“This is the first meeting and the person that said the opening prayer is our brother Ikponmwosa. As this is the first meeting for the year, we did not start on time due to the fact that many of us did not arrive on time as they did not know the meeting would start today”.

The above extract represents one of the instances of the guilds discourse which was recorded during one of the meetings held by the group that the researcher was allowed to be present in. A careful observation of this speech sample will reveal a variety of linguistic devices employed in portraying the ideological orientation of the group. In this extract, attention will be paid to some of the subtle reference to the ideology of the guild, the first of which is the use of the term ọ̀tẹ̒n (brother). This term is employed here as a reflection of the socio-cognitive orientation of members who see themselves as a unit of a family. This representation appeals to the sub-conscience of the members of the guild in the course of projecting tenet of oneness that made it possible for the activities of the group to be obscured from other members of the Ẹdo society.

5 Conclusion

It has been represented in the course of our analysis, the ideological orientation of the guilds, the discursive practices of the guilds so examined in this study alongside the different linguistic strategies employed for the expression of the groups’ linguistic ideology. It was also shown that the ideologies expressed by the guilds in the course of members’ interaction and the different linguistic devices used to convey these from a socio-cognitive and cultural perspective.

It was observed based on the selective analysis of different discursive extracts using a socio-cognitive model of discourse representation that the following ideologies are expressed by the groups with respect to their interactional structure.

1. Patriarchal ideology whereby every activities of the group including the process of new members induction is based on a link to the father’s side of one’s heritage. Little or no significance/consideration is given to those from the mother’s side. Also in the discourses of the guilds, it was found out that reference is often made to the legacies of fathers’ érhá as our data examination reveals, and

2. Gender ideology which is another orientation of the guilds’ discourse based on the patriarchal system presented above. It was observed that a lot of gender bias exists in the guilds as females are generally restricted from the activities of the guilds. It was seen from our examination of interactions that this gender restriction to the activities of the guilds extends to the process of membership adoption/initiation wherein those from the paternal side are automatically taken as opposed to those from the maternal side of a heritage.