Orwenjo: Political grandstanding and the use of proverbs in African political discourse 123 Discourse & Society Copyright © 2009 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi , Singapore and Washington DC) www.sagepublications.com Vol 20(1): 123–146 10.1177/0957926508097097 Political grandstanding and the use of proverbs in African political discourse DANIEL OCHIENG ORWENJO UNIVERSITY OF FRANKFURT , GERMANY ABSTRACT In Africa, the transmission of the overwhelming complexity of the people’s day to day experiences, are deeply rooted in the continent’s rich cultural artistry. Proverbs are the most widely and commonly used in the continent’s long standing history of oral arts. Proverbs are regarded as repositories of the people’s collective social, political, and cultural wisdom and as analytic tools of thought. This paper analyses how different Kenyan politicians and political parties used proverbs to strengthen and further their respective political positions with regard to the then proposed new constitution of Kenya, during the various countrywide campaigns in public political rallies and through the media. More specifically, the paper looks at how politicians and political parties used proverbs to further their different ideologies, to woo potential voters and to discredit opposing views. KEY WORDS : campaigns, critical discourse analysis, politics, proverbs, referendum Introduction Proverbs are regarded as a noble genre of African oral tradition that enjoys a special prestige of being the custodian of a people’s collective wisdom, philosophy of life, experience, fears and aspirations. According to Finnegan, ‘in many African cultures, a feeling for language, for imagery, and for the expression of abstract ideas through compressed and allusive phraseology comes out particularly clearly in proverbs’ (1970: 390). Nothing expresses Finnegan’s idea better than the famous Igbo proverb about proverbs, that goes: ‘Proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten’, or its Oromo equivalent: ‘A speech without a proverb is like soup without salt’. The Zulu of South Africa, on the other hand, are of the opinion that ‘without them (proverbs), language would be but a skeleton without flesh, a body without soul’ (Finnegan, 1970: 390). People use proverbs in Africa and elsewhere to increase the clarity as well as the semantic effect of what they intend to say. It is possible to state, by the use of proverbs, what would otherwise be ARTICLE 123-146 DAS-097097.indd 123 123-146 DAS-097097.indd 123 10/8/2008 5:41:04 PM 10/8/2008 5:41:04 PM Process Black Process Black