“ONCE THERE IS LIFE, THERE’S HOPE”: COPING AND COMFORTING STRATEGIES IN SELECTED YORUBA PROVERBS

Abstract

Yoruba proverbs are characterized by expressions aimed at praising, rebuking, encouraging and assuring. Extant studies on Yoruba proverbs have studied themes, literary devices, and psychological constructs, religious and cultural nuances, with a paucity of studies on how Yoruba proverbs can serve as comforting tools for people in bad situations. Therefore, this study was designed to identify and discuss self-comforting strategies in selected Yoruba proverbs, with the view to identifying the discourse issues in the proverbs, as well as the discursive strategies used to project comfort in the proverbs and their functions. Relevance Theory, complemented by Obohwemu’s Self-Comforting and Coping Theory were employed as the theoretical leaning for the study. Thirty proverbs were gathered and eighteen purposively selected owing to their possession of the themes of self-comfort and resilience. The findings of the study revealed four discourse issues of fate acceptance, resilience and fortitude, human vulnerability, and life lessons which index five comforting and coping strategies of emotional reframing, cognitive distraction, self-encouragement, mindful anticipation, and goal adjustment. The study concludes that Yoruba proverbs are handy instruments for psychological support, balancing and therapy in distressing circumstances.

KEYWORDS: Yoruba proverbs, Relevance Theory, Self-comforting and coping scale