The Indicative Mood in Ikwere: A Pragmatic Approach

This focused on the pragmatic approach to the study of the indicative mood in Ikwere. The specific objectives were to determine how the indicative mood is expressed in the Ikwere language and to identify the Speech Acts performed by the indicative mood in the language. In order to actualise the objectives of the study, the authors adopted the descriptive research design. A self-designed sentence list of 50 sentence items was used to collect data from three competent native speakers of the Ikwere language. For data analysis, the study utilised the descriptive method of data analysis. The findings of the study reveal that the indicative mood can be used to express actions or events that will take place, taking place or took place. The indicative mood is realised in various forms in the Ikwere language. Findings also reveal that the indicative mood in Ikwere performs three main speech acts, which are: the assertive, commissive and expressive Speech Acts in the Ikwere language. Following the findings of this study, it was therefore recommended that further studies on the pragmatics of other moods present in Ikwere language be carried out.