The Language of Hausa Films: Forging a New Discourse

Abstract

The paper studies Hausa film language through the analysis of three communication strategies, namely proverbs, imperatives and forms of address. It shows that Hausa film creates a new discourse by reflecting modern and traditional Hausa society. The films preserve some accepted cultural norms of behavior and norms of communication in order to please the more conservative public. On the other hand, combination of traditional and modern Hausa lifestyle evokes changes in the discourse. The paper shows that proverbs are commonly used as communication strategy for indirectness, rather than a specialized language. It also discovers that imperatives are used as communication strategy in close relations between interlocutors (no matter what their social status is) to express the direct message. As for forms of address, traditional and borrowed terms reflect the changing style of life. The examples extracted from the Hausa films are to show how the regular grammatical and lexical means change their discourse function in new social context.