A SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF SELECTED ENUANI PROVERBS

The paper is a sociolinguistic study of selected Enuani proverbs. Enuani refers to one of the dialects of the Igbo language spoken by people of the Aniocha/Oshimili people of Anioma in Delta State of Nigeria. It is used to describe a number of communities that are located within this region including the Ndi Onicha-Ado. It is one of the major dialects of the Igbo of the Southeast but with loaned words from Edo. It is distinguished by accent and mutually intelligible to the group of Anioma people in the state. In all cultures, proverbs form an integral part of people’s beliefs, their custom, norms, values and general worldview.  Like there Igbo counterpart, the Enuani people relish proverbial expressions as they are, in the words of Chinua Achebe, “the palm oil with which words are eaten”. Randomly selected from the author’s repertoire of Enuani proverbs as one from the area, 15 proverbs were analyzed using Ethnomethodology. The study found that Enuani proverbs show values of cooperation for peaceful co-existence, cordiality, respect for elders and good conduct. The study is significant because not much scholarly work was done on Enuani dialect, especially its rich proverbial legacy.  It is recommended that further studies be carried out on other aspects of the Enuani dialect by interested researchers using different linguistic tools. KEY WORDS: Ethnomethodology, Enuani, Dialect, Sociolinguistic, Proverbs.