DECIPHERING YAKA WISDOM: AN IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS OF PROVERBS AND ADVICE

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Yaka proverbs from a pragmatic point of view in terms of the speech act of advice. The research is two-fold, starting with a definition of proverbs and their characteristics, followed by an analysis of the speech act of advice in Yaka proverbs at three levels: pragmatic, semantic, and structural. The article highlights ten Yaka proverbs and describes their morpho-syntactic structure, denotation meaning, connotation or literary meaning, and pragmatic analysis and interpretation. The analysis examines the semantic meaning of advising, assuming the reader would want to know what should be done and whether the speaker has good reasons to say it. Finally, the article extends the meaning of each proverb by providing a directive (advice) that stems from the proverb's meaning. The findings of the study support the applicability of speech act theory to Yaka advice proverbs, verifying the hypothesis that Yaka proverbs consist of conversational patterns in which various acts of advice are used in different contexts of situations.