The Ethnography of Akan Speech Play

Abstract

Language is flexible and dynamic and can therefore be manipulated to fulfil various communicative and sociocultural functions. This paper looks at speech play and considers how language can be manipulated like a playing object and used as a game. The paper poses the following research questions (1) what types of speech plays are predominant in the Akan language? (2) What are the linguistic process involved in transforming the object language into speech play?, (3) what are the social functions of speech play ,and (4) what are the ethnographic situations under which speech play is employed? The paper will seek to answer these questions by looking at riddles, backward and forwarding inventing utterances, tongue twisters, pun, rhyme, quasi euphemisms jokes and humour. It will also consider the basic linguistic tools used in the manipulation of the language such as insertion, deletion, etc. The paper will briefly touch on speech play and gender.