CROWTHER JOURNAL OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES

This paper explores the sociolinguistics of proverbs in culture-based homilies in Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not to Blame (henceforth, The Gods) that enact existential truths and material realities of 21st-century Africa, which has been overlooked in previous research. The Gods serves as a source of data elicitation. Eleven purposively selected proverbs in the play constitute the study population. The study is underpinned by Hymes’ Ethnography of SPEAKING. Findings reveal that Rotimi’s deft deployments of proverbs in culture-based homilies in the drama foreground a degree of cultural affinity and indigenous knowledge transfer in ways relatable to the socio-cultural experiences of his audience. In the play, the selected proverbs index warnings and cautions, rebuke and censure, cultural identity preservation, perpetuation of effective leadership, equity and social justice. The study also unearths how the Yoruba ideological stance captured in proverbs in The Gods serve as culture-based homilies in ways that intuit the minds of readers by projecting the uniqueness of Africa’s native identities, indigenous epistemologies and rich cultural values in a world that inheres the unrelenting domination of skewed Western hegemony. It is argued that the gradual subjugation and erosion of Africa’s cultural values, traditional orientations and primordial cherished virtues should not be blamed on the overweening effects of modernisation. It is concluded that this study expands the frontiers of knowledge in the humanities, by providing profound insights into how African drama reinvent Africa’s moral wheels, legitimize social inclusiveness, and foreground the existentiality of divinity, preventing cultural contradictionsin this 21st-century fast-paced world.

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