Westernization and Indigenous Modes of Communication in Traditional African Setting: Assessment of the Igbo Cultural Heritage

We live in a rapidly changing world … a world in which there seems to be a conspiracy by the proponents of globalization to use digital devices for the westernization of all other cultures. This is indeed a worrisome development! But more worrisome is the fact that in contemporary African society, our communication systems ( music, dance, drama, story-telling, masking etc.) are being gradually superimposed with movie-watching, computer-gaming, celebrity-following and other digitally-induced forms of communication that are counter-productive to Africans. Obviously, such digitally-induced forms of communication not only shape the understanding and dreams of the ordinary citizen wherever he/she may be; but also create mass market of Western culture at the expense of indigenous African culture. In the light of the above observation, this paper shall with particular prejudice to the non-verbal forms of communication in traditional African setting, examine the roles of the indigenous modes of communication vis-à-vis their Western counterparts in the message transfer process. The study shall adopt the textual analysis method of research to investigate the survivability of the indigenous modes of communication among the Igbo's in South/East Nigeria in the face of palpable threat from the digital divide.