A Pragmastylistic Analysis of Figurative Language Used in Selected Royal Court Songs of Sa’idu Faru

From time immemorial, Hausa singers have been displaying their talents and contributing toward enlightening, educating, and informing societies. These among others are the stories of heroes from various institutions who contributed to the development of the society, politically, educationally, religiously, or battles and defense of the particular society those heroes belonged to. Little wonder, many of them (Hausa singers), especially the royal court singers have unique ways of using variety and striking figures of speech to showcase the image of whoever they wish. By so doing, various forms of metaphoric expressions, hyperbole, satire, irony as well as personifications are used for a reward from their client or ridicule to criticize and expose other opponents’ stupidity or vices. Accordingly, this paper aims to explore a few of those figures of speech, drawing relevant examples from the songs of Sarkin Tudun Falale titled Sarkin Tudun Falale Gogarman Magaji Ummaru, and that of Sultan Maccido titled Kana Shire Baban ‘Yanruwa. The two songs were transcribed and translated into the English language for analysis. The paper adopts pragmatics strategies such as Person Targeted Strategy and Idea Targeted Strategy, as well as ‘Style as Individual’ and ‘Style as Choice’ by Gibbons (2003) for its analysis. The paper reveals that Faru is unique in his use of language, as he uses figures of speech to eulogize Muhammadu Maccido and Sarkin Tudun Falale heavily, describing the influence, and their genealogy which is portrayed as eternal, while their rivals as temporal. Furthermore, through his exceptional use of figurative language vilifies and mocks their rivals.