Language as a means of transmitting culture in Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman

Abstract

Apart from material aspect of culture which has to do with artefacts, namely, tools, clothing food, medicine, utensils and housing, language remains the most potent medium of expressing a people's culture. It has also been observed that there is a subtle correlation between language and thought, and a people's language is the profound witticism of the native tongue which finds natural outlet in hard-core proverbs and pithy anecdotes. This is what informed this paper which examines Soyinka's imaginative use of Yoruba Language in the dramatization of a ritual.