MOTHER-FIGURE AND FAMILY BONDING IN IGBO SOCIETY: A LINGUISTIC APPRAISAL

Abstract:
Gender politics is one of the notable phenomena that have filtered into contemporary discourses in almost every discipline. However, it seems that greater percentage of such discussions focuses on the need for the restructuring of the socio-cultural architecture which is blamed to have assigned absolute privileges and power to the male gender. From different disciplinary orientations and approaches, this phenomenon has been examined in different societies. Contrarily, our paper examines the centrality of the mother-figure in the Igbo society South East Nigeria. The paper takes a deconstructive approach to argue that as much as other scholars may have focused on the pitiable but redeemable position in which the Igbo socio-culture places the woman, there are also areas that the same socio-culture strategically positions the woman as prime and inalienable. The paper adopts the ecolinguistic approach to establish how certain patterns of the Igbo language implicate the primacy of the mother-figure in family bonding and cohesion. The data for the paper were sourced through participant observation, and primary collection of such language patterns in the Igbo language society. Every society has unique patterns such as wise sayings, idioms, phrasal expressions, etc. which bear the thought pattern and consciousness of the people. The conclusion of the paper is that such language patterns as they exist in the Igbo language could be taken as a reflection of articulated patterns of thought and perception of members of the Igbo society about the woman. Thus so much as there are aspects every socio-culture which prove to be unjust to either of the genders, the positive aspects also need to be highlighted as a means of ensuring social cohesion and development