The Process of Inferencing in Language: A Comparison of English and Yoruba Languages

The Process of Inferencing in Language: A Comparison of English and Yoruba Languages

ABSTRACT

The use of English language, both oral and written, is always intriguing particularly at the metaphorical level. It has always been fascinating to observe that in the attempt of a writer to ‘conceal’ some information in his writing, he ends up provoking his audience to make inferences (whether correctly or wrongly). The question one is tempted to ask is, ‘why a writer (or speaker) should make some information overt, and others hidden. If this is a literary technique, how does it aid the process of interpretation?’ This study set out to examine the use of language in a special way by studying newspaper articles and texts from magazines. It focused on two languages – English and Yoruba. The purpose of the focus on these two languages was to compare the techniques that make statements prone to inferencing in the two languages and to highlight the areas of similarity and (or) dissimilarity. These two languages employ expressive or subjective language (that is, language that has some emotive function to perform) among other styles. They both use figures of speech extensively, although in terms of interpretation, Yoruba texts and speeches are often translated as ‘wholes’ for effectiveness, fragmented translation though possible, will not provide accurate interpretation of a Yoruba text. viii The study is divided into five chapters. The first chapter introduces the research problem and states the aims and scope of the study. It also provides justification for research. Chapter two discusses the review of related literature to the study of language and the process of interpretation. Chapter three discusses the theoretical framework adapted for the study which is a combination of modified functional grammatical approach to interpretation and frame-system theory. Chapter four provides the analysis of the selected texts and the discussion of the data. It also includes the comparison of the linguistic and non-linguistic observations made on the English and Yoruba texts which form the corpora of this study. Chapter five summarizes the research work and conclusions are drawn from the analyses in chapter four. Areas of further study are also suggested in this chapter. From this study, it became obvious that all the elements which are present in a particular piece of writing or utterance which will make the audience to attempt to interpret it beyond the literal level are present in both English and Yoruba. It was also discovered that, in the two languages, the writer or speaker is the one who initiates the process of inferencing by deliberately making some information overt and some others hidden. He also provides conversational clues to assist his audience to make inference.

The Process of Inferencing in Language: A Comparison of English and Yoruba Languages

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