Narratological Exploration of Igbo Folkloric Discourse: A Critical Analysis of Linguistic and Cultural Encoding in Selected Igbo Tales

That society is dynamic entails that no society is static; as days progress, new things come to replace old ones. With the coming of the Europeans in parts of African society, traditionalism gave way to modernism. To an extent, the society being dynamic seems detrimental to the Igbo tradition as modern civilization tends to make the Igbo tradition and culture extinct. With our people developing more penchant for the Western tradition, things keep falling apart in the contemporary Igbo society as the Igbo tradition and culture seem highly neglected. This paper therefore delves into the intricate cultural complexities of the Igbo people of southern Nigeria with the aim of exploring the linguistic feature of folklore as it heralds understanding and preserving of the Igbo tales. With a lucid and comprehensive exploration of the Igbo folklore, the realistic facts of the Igbo identity are X-rayed. With the folkloric language parsed, the importance of folklore, with specific reference to folktale, is vivified. The researchers believe that as most aspects of folklore are basically performed, then Schechner’s Performance Theory is considered an apt theoretical framework for the analysis of the research.