The Poetics of Oromo Blessing Expressions: A Stylistic Analysis of a Verbal Art Genre

Abstract

This study argues for the poetics of Oromo blessing expressions through presenting a stylistic analysis of the verbal art genre. It describes the overriding concerns of the blessing expressions, and analyzes the dominant stylistic devices employed. Hence, the study is descriptive and analytical in its approach.The data for the study are obtained both through fieldwork among the people, and review of secondary documents. The framwork of literary stylistics applicable to oral literary texts has been employed to conduct the analysis. The analysis reveals that Oromo blessing expressions exhibit recurrent poetic features at three levels. At phonological level, stylistic devices like rhyme, alliteration, assonace and consonance are dominantly employed to give musical quality to the epressions. At syntactic level, the blessing expressions exhibit recurrent stylistic features like parallelism, anaphora and antithesis as devices for creating literary effect. And at lexico-semantic level, the explication reveals that the verbal art predominantly employs symbols, metaphors, imagery and simile to foreground the ideas addressed in the performance. Based on the analysis conducted, the study argues that this verbal art genre of the Oromo employs rich stylistic devices comparable to the devices a poet employ in the written genre. If given a serious scholarly attention, the treasure with such literary merit will have a significant contribution in the study of Oromo (African) literature.