Ndongo Ibara’s Oratory among the Ambosi People: Grice’s Maxims Violation

Abstract

This research work investigates the pragmatic structure of traditional speech practices through an analysis of Ndongo Ibara’s Oratory among the Ambosi People, with particular emphasis on the systematic violation of Gricean conversational principles. The study has four objectives: it first aims at analysing how Yvon-Pierre Ndongo Ibara, a prominent Congolese linguist and author of l’Art Oratoire chez les Ambosi, uses oratory techniques among the Ambosi people of the Republic of Congo. It also has the purpose of identifying the types of maxim violations and explaining the communicative functions of these violations within Ambosi socio-cultural norms. It finally aims for the contribution to cross-cultural pragmatics by examining how meaning is negotiated beyond the literal interpretation. The theoretical framework is grounded in Grice’s Cooperative Principle, which demonstrates that effective communication assumes cooperation, with the flouting of maxims to create implicatures. The study adopts the qualitative approach with data basically drawn from l’Art Oratoire chez les Ambosi, collected through fieldwork, observation and interviews with the community members. The analysis reveals frequent violations of Gricean maxims of quality, quantity, relevance and manner. It demonstrates the flouting of the quality maxim with metaphorical exaggeration within Embosi proverbs and the violation of the maxim of quantity through proverbial amplification. The study also shows the violation of the relevance maxim with indirect topical shifts within proverbs and adages. Finally, the work proves the emergence of implicatures with the violation of the manner maxim through the ambiguity of rhetorical strategies. These violations describe persuasive force, preserve politeness conventions, and encode shared cultural knowledge within Embosi language. The study argues that maxims violation in Ambosi oratory constitutes a culturally regulated mechanism of meaning production rather than deviation from communicative norms.