“Proverbs are the Wisdom of the Streets”: A Pragma-Stylistic Analysis of Proverbs in Kemi Adetiba’s King of Boys Movie Franchise
Philomena Ama Okyeso Yeboah 
, James Gyimah Manu & Philip Kwame Freitas
Issue: Vol.3 No.8 August 2022 Article 4 pp. 323-336
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.2022384 | Published online 22nd August 2022.
© 2022 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Various genres of literature within the African context have over the years portrayed and highlighted African cultures and traditions. One effective tool that has been used in the full realization of this has been the use of proverbs. The present study set out to examine how proverbs are used in Kemi Adetiba’s popular movie franchise, King of Boys, from the pragma-stylistic perspective. The paper opines that proverbs are not used arbitrarily by screenwriters, but are specifically used, through various figures of speech, to offer caution, warning or advice, assert one’s authority and power, and show one’s intent to achieve a goal. This study extends knowledge in the study of proverbs and presents language use in movies as a rich avenue in the promotion of knowledge in African societies.
Keywords: Proverb, Pragmatics, Stylistics, Pragma-stylistics.
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Philomena Ama Okyeso Yeboah (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of English, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi-Ghana. Her research interests are in the area of Literatures of the Diaspora, the contested gendered terrain in Africa, and streetism and its rippling effects on the current generation of Africans. She teaches courses in Literature at the postgraduate and undergraduate levels.
James Gyimah Manu is an Assistant Lecturer at the Department of English, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana. He holds MPhil and BA in English from KNUST. His research interests cover topics in the areas of Stylistics, Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics. Currently, his research is focused on how language is used within the Ghanaian media landscape.
Philip Kwame Freitas is an MPhil Candidate at the Department of English, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana.. He has research interests in bildungsroman in African novels, postcolonial literature, Oral Literature, and literature of the diaspora.
Yeboah P.A.O, Gyimah Manu J. & Freitas P.K., ““Proverbs are the Wisdom of the Streets”: A Pragma-Stylistic Analysis of Proverbs in Kemi Adetiba’s King of Boys Movie Franchise,” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 3, no.8 (2022):323-336. https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.2022384
© 2022 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Publishers. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
