The Interaction of Language, Ideology and Identity in the Edo Guilds of Discourses

Volume: 2 , Issue: 1 , October 2023

The Interaction of Language, Ideology and Identity in the Edo Guilds of Discourses

Abstract

The guild system is a professional body associated with the Edo socio-cultural and political institutions revolving around the Monarchy. This is expected to provide the necessary insight and comprehension of the nature of the guild's socio-cultural activities resulting in the distinct ideology expressed and identity portrayed by the guild as a socio-cultural pillar of the Edo society. van Dijk's socio-cognitive representation model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Bucholtz and Hall's Socio-Cultural Linguistic Approach were adopted for our investigation. These theories were adopted in such a way that the former accounted for the ideological issues in the study while the latter was used to address the issue of identity construction in the study. Data were purposively collected through in-depth interview of principal informants (individuals with knowledge of the activities of the guilds examined) and direct observation of the interaction between the members of the different guilds. The data collected were subjected to discourse and register analyses. The study made a lot of findings thus: that the guilds possess a distinct register from the regular Edo language used by other members of the society and the nature of this register is a reflection of the different activities embarked on by the guilds. The cultural tenet of the guilds (ideology) is responsible for the secret nature of their activities which has contributed to the emergence of the distinct register mentioned here. The choice of language use by these groups therefore is determined by the ideological orientation of the guilds which seeks to maintain the relevance of the group at all cost. This when apprised in the context of this study, is synonymous with the cultural values of the society that creates such distinctions between royals' and commoners' identities, realness and fakeness as well as power and legitimacy