The Pragmatic Analysis of Gurage Riddle

Abstract

This paper is based on a pragmatic analysis of Gurage riddles that lay an important role in enlightening both children and adults as well. In line with this, it aimed to investigate how Gurage people discuss pragmatic discourses and introduce them into society over riddles. The data were collected through interviews from the local people and documents. The document -‘Yegurage Wemaka’ from which fourteen riddles were collected for analysis was the primary data gathering tool for the study. A purposive sampling technique was employed to choose the informants and the document which clearly contains Gurage riddles. The collected riddles were clustered according to their theme and grammatically founded meaning, and they are transcribed into alphabetic script since they were in Ethiopic scripts. Then, the pragmatic roles of the collected data were analyzed qualitatively from the perspectives of Relevance theory hence, the study focused on the interpretive aspects of riddles. The finding showed that pragmatically Gurage riddles play a great role to promote the culture of ‘Enset’ as the main source of food and its production, to introduce the materials that are used in their day to day life and way of house building (folk materials), to promote Gurage people’s transportation system and infrastructures, to show as the coffee ceremony is the main social coexistence, to promote the culture of Gurage people agriculture, death, and destruction. Finally, it also found out that context and cultural knowledge play a major in interpreting and understanding Gurage riddles.