UNITY AND COOPERATION AS PORTRAYED IN NZEMA PROVERBS

The paper seeks to examine an important aspect of the numerous themes under which Nzema proverbs may be classified. It is a descriptive study on unity, togetherness, and cooperation as portrayed in Nzema proverbs. The paper establishes the fact that most Nzema proverbs encourage the positive attitude of being united and working in collaboration to achieve success in all human endeavors. It again identifies and discusses some inherent literary features and devices such as metaphor, personification, repetition, exaggeration, parallelism and sound effect such as alliteration. Interestingly, the paper further explores and examines some proverbs in the language that counter the core of the study. In other words, these proverbs tend to be contrary to the fact that people need to unite, come together, work collectively and tolerate others' view and opinion for the betterment of life. Findings also proved Yankah's (1989) assertion right, that, proverbs are essentially useful when employed within the appropriate context of communication. It also confirms the claim made by Hallen (2000) that, the use of proverb is ‘context-dependent'. Data for the study was obtained from both primary and secondary sources. A semi-structured interview was used to elicit information on Nzema proverbs from four respondents while some Nzema literature texts were consulted as a secondary source.