Speaking for the Chief: Okyeame and the Politics of Akan Royal Oratory (African Systems of Thought)

...an unprecedented opportunity to understand West African oratory from the point of view of a native Akan speaker who is also a gifted linguist and ethnographer...[Yankah] shows with elegance the connections between verbal strategies and the cultural organization of West African social systems. - "Alessandro Duranti". Among the Akan of Ghana and in other areas of West Africa, royal speech is not articulated with a single voice but is rather a composite of the chief's words and their artistic relay by his orator and principal diplomat, the okyeame. In the royal entourage the okyeame is the most conspicuous personage, functioning as the chief's mouth and ear: the individual through whom the chief speaks and through whom others' words may reach the chief. This little-studied phenomenon receives comprehensive exploration in Kwesi Yankah's engaging "Speaking for the Chief", a theoretically informed work rich with firsthand observations. Yankah shows the art of the okyeame to be not simply a genre of speaking but a set of cultural practices that mediate and reconstitute local notions of power, hegemony, and public discourse.

History

YANKAH, KWESI

Africa

Indiana University Press

"... offers readers profound insights and useful information on the power of the word in African societies... " —Research in African Literatures"I would recommend ÂSpeaking for the Chief not only to students of West African culture, by whom it should be greatly welcomed, but also to anyone intersted in issues surrounding specific genres of discourse in relation to cultural organization." —Journal of American Folklore"Drawing on the interdisciplinary modes of sociolinguistics, political anthropology, and the ethnography of speech, Yankah allows the reader to hear a little-known and even less studied ‘voice’ integral to Akan chiefly power. This book deserves the serious attention of Akan and Africanist scholars alike." —Choice"... an unprecedented opportunity to understand West African oratory from the point of view of a native Akan speaker who is also a gifted linguist and ethnographer.... [Yankah] shows with elegance the connections between verbal strategies and the cultural organization of West African social systems." —Alessandro Duranti"This study is clearly important in ethnographic terms... But it equally throws new light on more general aspects of verbal and political processes.... will stimulate both specialists and students far beyond the confines of its specific ethnographic setting." —American Anthropologist"... an immensely valuable book which deserves a wide and appreciative readership." —Journal of African History

Literature & Fiction

The Akan Trickster Cycle: Myth Or Folktale

The Proverb in the Context of Akan Rhetoric

<p>Attracting renewed attention by a new generation of scholars, the book presents a comprehensive ethnography of proverb communication in an African culture and achieves a significant breakthrough in proverb studies. The author critically reviews the dynamics of the proverb, one verbal genre that embodies the high point of rhetoric in traditional and contemporary Africa, and explores in rich details the proverb's creative potential, authorship and effectiveness in crisis management. Yankah elevates the documentation of the African proverb beyond decontextualized compilations, and portrays the proverb as a dynamic communicative strategy in which form, meaning and logic are in constant flux. The study, which focuses on the Akan of Ghana, situates the proverb in the heart of real life discourse interactions and monitors its rhetorical efficacy on the basis of indigenous aesthetics. The book should be of value to folklorists, sociolinguists, anthropologists, literary scholars and students of African studies and communications.</p>

Diasporic Africa Press

THE PEN AT RISK: SPILLING MY LITTLE BEANS

Biographies & Memoirs

Memoirs

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Books by YANKAH, KWESI