INCANTATION AS DISCOURSE: A DISCOURSE-STYLISTIC STUDY OF THECONFRONTATIONAL SCENE OF OLA ROTIMI’S TRAGIC DRAMA- THE GODSARE NOT TO BLAME

Ibrahim Esan

OLAOSUN (PhD)

Department of English,

Obafemi Awolowo University,

Ile-Ife, Nigeria

ieolaosun@oauife.edu.ng

Abstract

This paper examines the texts of incantation in the

confrontational scene of Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not to Blame

and analyses them using discourse- stylistics approach. This

approach is a unity of the procedures used in linguistic

stylistics and grammatically oriented discourse analysis.

Using this approach on the data, the paper reveals that

incantations have power not only because their words build

some spiritual connections or derive from mythical sources

but also, and more importantly, because they are expressions

that point to reality, model real life arguments and logics.

The paper reveals further that the dexterity displayed in

the structuring of the discourse’s grammatical elements

which makes it fulfill the qualities of well –organized

texts also endows the discourse with extra semantic and

pragmatic forces. The paper shows, on the whole, that

incantatory discourse is a veritable data for elucidating

grammatically oriented branch of discourse stylistics.

Introduction

In some parts of the world, the major use of incantation is

to cast spell on an object or a person. In African context,

incantation has both positive and negative connotations:

there are incantations of fortunes, armoural incantations,

and incantations of spell. When incantation is used to call

up evils on an object or a person, it becomes a spell. This

is called Egun or Epe in Yoruba language. When it is used

for self defense, it is called ma dari kan; when used to seek

out fortunes, it is called Awure or Ofo Ori Ire (Dopamu

2000). Oduyoye’s (1998:203) description of incantation as

“potent speech” encapsulates very splendidly the Africans’

discernment of the concept. According to her, incantations

are words which have the power of becoming events in life

simply by being uttered and for her, it is the

juxtapositions of Hebrew piy and mi-se-wah “command,

commandment” in King 13:21:21.She opines further that an ofo

(incantation) is an order comparable to the authority that

inheres permanently in the words of God as revealed in the

Holy Quran (Suura 16:40;20:17;35:82):’inna-maa ‘amruhu ‘idaa

‘araada say an,an ya-qu la lau kunfayakun’.

Both in Africa and somewhere else, incantation is generally

understood to be more powerful than other mundane or common

place languages and this power is often connected with

mysticism or supernatural sources. This study departs

slightly from this humdrum view about incantation by

connecting its strength to the nuance of its linguistic

formations.

Aim and theoretical framework of the study

This work is a study in discourse stylistics, a branch of

stylistics, which focuses on the structural and socio-

functional elements of discourses. This branch of stylistics

employs the tools of grammatically- oriented discourse

analysis to texts’ analysis and unites this with the

approach in linguistic stylistics. The aim of this paper is

to demonstrate that incantation is a rich text from

structural and rhetorical dimensions. First, emphasis will

be placed on the grammatical formations in the text with due

consideration for its “compositional structure” (Halliday

and Matthiessen, 2004:5).The kind of grammatical analysis

that will be conducted in this study is that which Halliday

(1985:xvii) recommend in the following words:

In order to provide insights into the meaning and

effectiveness of a text, a discourse grammar needs

to be functional and semantic in its orientation, with

the grammatical categories explained as the realization

of semantic patterns.

In line with Halliday’s submission above, the

textualization strategies used in the texts of incantation

under study will be described. Secondly, the rhetorical

system of the text will be examined to demonstrate how it

relates to or models real life or common place arguments. In

summary, the grammatical organization and cohesive mechanism

of the text as well as its eloquent/ expressive traits will

be related to their semogenic (meaning creating) content.

As a theoretical ground for the first pre-occupation above,

I will dwell shortly on the features of well organized text

with a view to setting the standard with which to measure

the structural content of the texts of incantation under

study. A written or spoken discourse is said to be well

organized when it fulfils some or all of the following seven

conditions: cohesion, coherence, intentionality,

acceptability, informativeness, situationality and

intertextuality (See Kamil, 2006 on: http://www.tlumaczenia-

angielski.info/linguistics/discourse.htm).Halliday and Hasan

(1976:4) describe cohesion as “the relation of meaning that

exist within the text, and that define it as a text”. In

other words, cohesion concerns the unity and connectivity of

the various propositions in a text such that it is easy to

follow it and its progression. Cohesion is achieved in texts

by grammatical (substitution, ellipsis, reference,

conjunction) and lexical (reiteration and collocation)

elements called cohesive devices.

Coherence simply means "fastening together" of ideas or

propositions in texts. Halliday and Hasan (1976:10) submit

that cohesion is “the set of semantic resources for linking

a sentence with what has gone before”. Similarly, Daniel

Kies (1996) identifies techniques of achieving coherence in

texts as repetition, synonymy, antonymy, pro-forms,

collocation, enumeration, parallelism, transition and

exemplification.

By intentionality is meant that a text must be purposeful or

that its message must be conveyed with intention of meeting

some communicative target. In other words, the propositions

in well -organized texts are goal-driven. Generally

speaking, there are two aspects of language functions: macro

and micro functions. Halliday’s classification of language

function as ideational, interpersonal and textual only

account for the macro-function of language. Several other

functions (micro) that language can be used to accomplish

include physiological, phatic, recording, communicating,

reasoning, identifying and pleasure function.

Also, a well-organized text is properly contextually

embedded; it supplies, through its propositions (sentences

or utterances), an hypothetical context through which

readers or listeners could pick the appropriate, out of

several other meanings that the propositions are capable of

generating. This phenomenon of a text describes its

situationality.

The overall goal of a text is the conveyance of information.

In other words, well-written/spoken texts are informative or

have the quality of informativeness. The information

conveyed is usually, except in some rhetorical situations,

complete, clear and accurate.

Moreover, a well-organized text has acceptability feature,

that is, it communicates agreeable facts. With this quality,

the text enjoys the approval of its target audience(s).

Finally, a well-organized text is a demonstration or a

manifestation of intertextual relations among texts; it is

“an absorption and transformation of another” (Kristeva,

1990) or other texts. In other words, it is not an isolated

language product; it draws upon, identifies with, and

improves upon certain realm of sources.

Incantation, no doubt, is a culturally- embedded discourse.

In my analysis therefore, I will also draw upon the

principles of socio-semiotics, a branch of semiotics which

focuses on social meaning-making practices of all types,

whether visual, verbal or aural in nature (Thibault 1991)

and which establishes a disjunction between meaning

production and social practices. This framework is

particularly suitable for this study because it shares many

of the pre-occupations of pragmatics, sociolinguistics,

cultural studies and discourse analysis. By drawing upon it

in my descriptive account in this study, I will be able to

account for aspects of eco - social meaning in the

incantation and relate them to its begrudging context.

Contextual background of the play and a review of some

earlier studies

Ola Rotimi’s drama The Gods Are Not to Blame, published 1971, is

a skilful transplantation of the theme of Sophocles’ Oedipus

Rex to African soil. It is the story of Odewale who, by the

interplay of his and parents’ action, commits two most

execrable crimes: patricide and incest. Since its

productions thirty nine years ago, several scholars, within

and outside Africa, have worked on this and some other

Nigerian drama (e.g. Dapo Adelubga, 1978, Ezenwa-Ohaeto,

1994, Isidore Diala, 2005 and Odebunmi, 2006).

Commenting on Ola Rotimi’s style in The Gods are Not to Blame,

Adelugba (1978:214) avers:

...The Gods Are Not to Blame, apart from its appeal to

modern Nigerian on the ethical level, is its

adventurous

creation of a new theater language which borrows

effectively

from the indigenous oral tradition and uses metaphors

and proverbs

from our common agrarian background, the flora and

fauna of our country,

the birds, beasts and flowers of our native land...

The view above aligns with, and is corroborate by the view

of Isidore Diala (2005:1) that drama is a “culture-

authenticating” literary form. Commenting on the ritual and

mythological resourcefulness of Irobi’s drama, Isidore

claims that the African/ Igbo dramatic form exhibits some

cultural distinctions as opposed to Echeruo’s “Eurocentrism

of the Greek model”. By this, Diala insinuates that an

African drama is an “appropriation of a formation rooted in

a specific African culture” (p.28). Ezenwa-Ohaeto (1994) had

earlier conceived of African culture as a “drama culture”,

which offers the playwrights from the region, creative

strategies, involving mostly, the “enrichment of their plays

through utilization of diverse cultural features”.

The implication of the views above is that: in order to

ascertain the overall appeal of an African drama, the

analyst inevitably has to call upon the actual mediating

African cosmology, where the drama takes root. My analysis

of the texts under study will premise upon this claim.

Noting the scantiness of studies devoted to the linguistic

analysis of the text, Odebunmi (2008), studies the pragmatic

functions of the crisis-motivated proverbs in The Gods are Not

to Blame. Using Mey’s (2001) model of Pragmatic Acts,

Odebunmi reveals that The Gods are Not to Blame is characterized

by two types of crisis motivated proverbs, namely, social-

crisis motivated proverbs and political crisis-motivated

proverbs. The present paper is an addition to, and a

furtherance of the efforts of the few Nigeria language

scholars, like Odebunmi (2006) and Oloruntoba-Oju (1998) who

give attention to the aspects of the linguistic resources of

the text. In advancing the efforts of these earlier

scholars, the present study (beguiled by its richness)

concentrates on one aspect of linguistic resources of the

text, which has been largely neglected: the incantatory

passages. It would be demonstrated in this paper that

incantation is not only a cultural product but also a

peculiar linguistic formation which obligates the attention

of stylisticians, cultural semioticians and other discourse

analysts.

Data Analysis

After the theoretical preliminaries above, the rest of this

paper will be committed to data analysis. I will first

present the data and this will be followed by a descriptive

account of it. It is imperative to note that the

confrontation which brings about the incantations involves

two parties: king Odewale (OLD MAN) with his entourage and

Odewale who conflict over ownership of a farm land. The data

is labelled- A and B to enhance easy reference during

analysis. The ‘actional’ elements of the discourses are not

included in the data for they are not directly relevant to

the concern of this study, which is to investigate the

semio- linguistic qualities of incantation. However, their

places are indicated by braces.

TEXT A

ODEWALE: what are these before my eyes?

what are these before my eyes?Are they mountains or are they trees?They are human beings and not trees.They are human beings and not trees.For trees have no eyes;and mountains have no eyes.Then let these eyes around me close.Close, close in sleep.That is my word-the mountain always sleeps.Sleep...sleep...sleep...[ ]Remain standing, remain rooted-A tree stump never shifts.Stand there...stand back and sleep, sleep I say,Sleep till the sun goes to sleep And you wake up to know my power.Sleep...sleep...s-l-e-e-p[ ]

TEXT B

OLD MAN: No termite ever boasts of devouring rock!I am your lord, your charms can do me nothing.Venom of Viper does nothing to the back of a

tortoise.The grinding stone says you must kneel to my

power; The basket says you must tremble when you see me;Mortal and pestle say you must bow countless times

to power.The day that the partridge meets the lord of the

farm, it jumps into the bush with its backor it drops dead. Drop dead, drop dead[ ]

The plant that rivals the opa tree in sizeIs killed by Opa;the tree that over-reaches the Oririseeks its own death;And the plant that entwines its branchWith the branch of OmoluwereWill be strangled by Omoluweredrop dead ...drop dead...I say, drop d-e-a-d...drop d-e-a-d...

ODEWALE: [ ]When Ogun, the god of iron,Was returning from IreHis loincloth was a hoop of fire.Blood...the deep red stainOf victim’s blood his cloak[ ]This is... OgunAnd Ogun says: flow!Flow...flow... f-l-o-w [ ]

Analysis of text A

This text is astonishingly rich in rhetorical and

grammatical resources. Its rhetorical structure is

represented below:

Exponence of the Verbal Acts

Semantic function Discourse Act/ Rhetorical Function

what are thesebefore my eyes?what are thesebefore my eyes?

Questioning 1. Invocation of assaillants’spirit of humanness.

2. Clarification of

Are they mountainsor are they trees?

the actor’s frame of perception.

3. Defamiliarization of the familiar.

They are humanbeings and nottrees.They are human beings and not trees.

Answering 1. Reconstruction/ re-affirmation of reality.

2. Simulation of senses.

For trees have noeyes;and mountains haveno eyes.

Giving reason 1. Justification ofaffirmation.

2. amplification ofargument

Then let these eyesaround me close.Close, close insleep.Remain standing,remain rooted-Sleep till the sungoes to sleep And you wake up toknow my power.Sleep...sleep...s-l-e-e-p

Commanding Conditioning of theassailants to a passive state.

the mountain alwayssleeps

A tree stump never shifts

Talking reality Negotiation of concessive acceptance of condition.

As the analysis above might not be comprehensive enough, I

explicate in greater details shortly. The mesmerizing begins

with question act and this is followed by the answer to the

question. This question- answer strategy models the

technique in normal everyday argumentation. The questions

are not asked felicitously for the actor certainly knows the

answers to them. The choice of the near demonstrative-these-

as opposed to the far one-those- suggests that the objects

of the question are near and are perceptible to the actor.

The congruent question, as indicated above, serves to

strengthen the logical quality of the incantation.

At another level of interpretation, the question act serves

in this incantation, what Hawkes (1977:116) describes as

“the coding of mystery” as it frames the familiar as if they

were unfamiliar. The actor employs this logic of de-

familiarizing and re-familiarizing in order to construct a

clear frame of perception for himself and compel the mental

frame of his assailants to a confused state of riddle. The

actor, acting upon the assailants’ knowledge of themselves,

prepares a favourable ground for the potency of his charm.

By compelling the assailants’ admittance of their humanness,

the actor is able to aim his ‘verbal bullet’ at that

significant part of the assailants- their eyes, having

established the fact that after all, they are human beings

with eyes.

The incantation is also characterized by affirmative verbal

acts, especially in the adverbial clauses of reason” for

trees have no eyes; and mountains have no eyes”. This serves

in justifying the actor’s earlier answer to his question.

The argument that plants do not have eyes may be

unacceptable to biological scientists, who, for instance

believe that green plants are sensitive to light and move in

the direction of it. But in their primitive science, both

the actor and the assailants share the mutual belief that

plants do not have eyes.

After putting into effect a damaging admittance on his

assailants through arguments of reason, the actor then

lunches his ‘magical missile’, conditioning them to a

passive state, for it is in this state of man that man’s

spirit can be attacked. It is a common knowledge that many

of the evils that befall humans happen when humans are

asleep. That is why the actor intensifies the imperatives

“Sleep...sleep...s-l-e-e-p”

In the final part of the mesmerizing encounter, the actor

negotiates from his assailants a concessive acceptance of

the passive state to which he has subjected them, bulldozing

them with factitive acts “the mountain always sleeps; a tree

stump never shifts”. That “mountains always sleep, and that

“a tree stump never shifts” are established cultural facts.

Facts like these are capable of having overwhelming effects

on thought; no wonder why the charm works on the assailants,

making them fast asleep and standing transfixed.

So far, I have shown that the text of incantation under

analysis is rich in rhetorical resources by describing its

rhetorically maneuvering strategies. I can now dwell on the

‘textualization’ elements therein. It will be demonstrated

that the text is a well formed discourse as it is unified,

coherent and emphatic. The text develops relations among its

component parts through syntactic and lexical re-iteration,

conjunctive and referential devices. These are exemplified

below.

Repetition. The first three utterances of the incantation

illustrate the cohesive phenomenon of repetition. The second

question utterance is a total reiteration of the first.

Similarly, the second alpha clause in the compound

interrogative utterance “Are they mountains or are they

trees?” exhibits structural sameness with the first clause.

This device is generally used in discourses for performing

emphatic function. In the context of this incantation, the

repetition serves in endowing the incantation with hypnotic

quality and in representing the annoying state of the actor.

Textually, the repetition reflects an aspect of its

sophistication, making it somewhat musical or poetic.

Also, there is the repetition of the lexemes- trees,

mountains, eyes and sleep. These lexemes are significant to

the interpretation of the incantation. They are connected,

through the operation of metaphorization, to enhance

meanings and effects in the incantation. In the utterance

“remain standing, remain rooted”, the lexical item “rooted”

illustrates the cohesive phenomenon of partial repetition as

it hacks back on the lexical item “standing”. This partial

repetition contributes some flexibility to the incantation,

making it a text of variety and in this way, has some

poetic qualities.

Reference: The incantation is highly unified. It has strong

linkage quality and this qualifies it as a high discourse.

The linear structure of the text is presented below for

illustration:

What are these before my eyes?

What are these before my eyes?

Are they mountains or are they trees?

They are human beings and not trees

They are human beings and not mountains.

For trees have no eyes;

and mountains have no eyes.

then let these eyes around me close

Close, close in sleep, close in sleep

That is my word the mountain always sleeps

Sleep… sleep…sleep

Remain standing remain rooted

a tree stump never shifts.

Stand there… Stand back and sleep I say.

Sleep till the sun goes to sleep

and you wake up to know my power.

Sleep…Sleep…S-l-e-e-p…

The exhophoric demonstrative reference, “these” in

utterances 1and 2 in the text serves in estranging the

assailants and the choice of impersonal “what” instead of

the personal “who” to refer to them in “what are these

before my eyes” serves as a demeaning device to reduce the

humanness quality of the assailant and make them feel

embarrassed. In furtherance of this demeaning act, the actor

likens them to trees and mountains. The anaphoric pronominal

“they” repeated thrice in the encounter serves as a thematic

device for bringing the assailants to the center of the

verbal attack.

Conjunction: Conjunctions are judiciously used in the text

to express several “logico-semantic senses” (Martin,

Matthiessen and Painter, 1997:184). For instance, the causal

conjunction “for” in “For trees have no eyes; and mountains

have no eyes” and the temporal conjunction “then” in “then

let these eyes around me close” perform strong linking

function.

In this incantation, the actor displays a verbal act of

self- contradiction by first framing his assailants as non-

human and later affirming that the objects of the impersonal

pronoun-What- are human objects. The reason for this

affirmation is signaled by the conditional positive causal

conjunction of reason “for” in “for trees have no eyes and

mountain have no eyes”. He then expresses the subsequence of

this affirmation in the use of the negative temporal

conjunction “then” in enhancing the verbal imperative – “let

these eyes around me close”. The grammatical connection

between this utterance and the earlier one is that the

former is subsequent to the latter.

Reiteration: In addition to the associations between

sentence utterances discussed above, words are also

structured in a way that they exhibit some internal

connection with one another. The second question- utterance

in the text is a total reiteration of the first. Also, the

second clause of the compound sentence- “Are they mountains

or are they trees?” is a structural repetition of the first.

There is partial lexical reiteration in “remain standing,

remain rooted” for the word “rooted” partially restates the

word “standing” as the former hacks back to the latter.

Whether total or partial, reiteration is a lexical/

structural device for making texts emphatic and this is also

the case for the text under study.

ANALYSIS OF TEXT B

This text of incantation is dominantly a text of

demonstration of experience and knowledge, conciliation of

beliefs and staging of factual realities. The factual

content of the incantation can be described under logical,

ecological and cultural categorizations as follows.

Logical Facts: In the Old man’s incantation, many facts are

implicitly expressed. Arriving at their unequivocal senses

will involve some rational processes. For instance, the

metaphors of termite and rock in “no termite ever boasts of

devouring rock,” and the metaphor of viper and tortoise in

“venom of viper does nothing to the back of a tortoise”, are

significant in the context of the incantation. The first

metaphor is clarified, by logical connection, to “I am your

lord; your charm can do me nothing”. The logical process is

described below.

1. Premise Statement Deductions Fallacy

No termite everboast of devouringrock

1. Rock is superiorto

the termite.

2. I am the rock;you

are the termite.

3. Termites can devour.

I cannot bedevoured.

2. Venom of viperdoes noting to theback of thetortoise.

You are viper

I am tortoise

The poison ofyour charm cannot harm me.

Ecological Facts- Several ecological facts are articulated,

using animal and plant imagery. In (2) above, the hard

quality of the tortoise’s cell is harnessed to render the

rival’s charm impotent. Also, the Old Man harnesses and

appropriates the quality of some trees in expressing the

hardiness of his charm. The trees include Opa, Oriri and

Omoluwre. The semiotic elucidation below clarifies the

semantic value of the signifying practice in the context of

the incantation.

At the primary level, Opa is a form of tree- bamboo tree.

It is of better-quality than other trees in terms of height

and “fecundity”. It usually dominates its ecological

setting. At another level of the semiosis, Opa is a very

authoritative secret cult in Yoruba society. It is a down-

to-earth group, as it deals with offenders in a “capital”

way. It therefore can be seen as an indirect invocation of

the cultic power of Opa to unleash terror on the opponent.

In addition to these senses, the actor plays on the

semantics of the second syllable of the di-syllabic

word .The syllable /pa / is a verb which means “to kill”.

This sense is indirectly invoked in the incantation to

dampen down the opponents’ confidence.

Oriri is another kind of tree specially known for long

height. The tree is especially strong and can withstand

powerful wind. In spite of the height, the turgid stem

cannot be easily broken and the heavy branches are strong

wind- breakers. Other trees that are not as heavy may face

the risk of being destroyed by wind if they rival oriri’s

height. In this encounter, the Old man frames himself as

Oriri in terms of magical power and Odewale as an ordinary

tree, which is dancing at the bridge head of death by

picking a race of strength with him.

In addition, Omuluwere is a creeper-tree. It has

several branches that curl and twirl. The tree is mulish in

these growth acts. It is very taut and unbreakable. It

establishes disparaging association with other trees. The

reference to these trees and their exceptional domineering

vigor may compel the opponent to back out of the “deadly’’

scuffle.

Cultural facts

The Old man also draws upon his cultural experience,

and appropriates it to defy the power of his rival. The

African cultural experience of pounding is expressed in

‘’Mortal and pestle say you must bow countless times to

power” and “the grinding stone says you must kneel to

power”. The images below illustrate the cultural phenomena

under explanation.

What each of the images above suggests/symbolizes in the

context of this incantation is acquiescence to a superior

authority/power. The woman that is pounding above certainly

bends to the pounded substance. Likewise, the woman that is

grinding kneels down. In African context, the acts of

bending and kneeling are acts of respect and submission.

These are harnessed in this incantation to compel the

opponent’s submission. Similarly, in the expression “the day

the partridge meets the lord of the farm, it jumps into the

bush with its back’’, the Old man draws upon his knowledge

of farming and the usual, somewhat unholy relationship

between farmers and the destructive rats, rabbits and

rodents that feed on their crops when the owners of the farm

have returned home. From the foregoing, it can be said that

an incantatory discourse is a corroboration of inter-textual

relations among texts. This is because the incantatory texts

under study pencil in heavily upon the Yoruba cultural texts

in expressing definite factual realities.

This text is also rich in grammatical resources. All

the utterances in the incantation are declarative sentences.

They are dominantly active sentences, following the SPCA

structure. This sentence pattern represents an aspect of the

authoritative use of language. The choice of the passive

form in “the plant that rivals the Opa tree in size….” to

“the plant that entwines its branch ….is strangled by

Omoluwere” is a thematic device for rendering the rival

passive. This structure illustrates the relations of

language form and function.

Conclusion

This study has revealed first that the incantatory texts of

Ola Rotimi’s The gods Are Not to Blame embody a vital formal

element of the dramatic text. It has also been demonstrated,

through the analysis of its prototype in this text, that

incantation is rich in semio-linguistic resources, for its

rhetorical and grammatical content are sharp in expressing

power, wading authority and resisting suppression. The

language sample is sophisticated, full of wits and weighty

facts. It is an intensified language-the type which, using

the words of Monsuld (2007:51), “creates meaning and power”

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