Mâatha: Descrptive Study of Litigation among Chasu Speaking People

Abstract

This paper is a descriptive study of language use by Chasu speaking people of northern dialect in handling litigation. The study is a product of triangulated data from researcher’s participant observation and interview sessions with the key informants, in addition to the researcher’s own knowledge and insights as a native speaker. The findings showed that the Chasu speaking people have elaborate institutionalized language use in handling litigation in which there are a total of thirteen speech events of differing lengths and number of participants. There are also a total of thirty five speech acts that were constituents of different speech events. The patterns and procedures of the speech events are linearly arranged and participant roles clearly defined with clear manifestation of differing power relations.