Situation-Constrained Language Strategies in Femi Osofisan's Farewell to a Cannibal Rage

Abstract This paper explores language strategies of marriage-proposal discourses in Osofisan’s Farewell to a Cannibal Rage to explicate how its linguistic elements are patterned to achieve goal and the frequency of each one’s use. Osofisan’s play is a fictional representation of the height of parental influence on their children’s spouse choices in the African context. Although the play has garnered many scholarly studies, none has looked into the language strategies of marriage-proposal engagement and conflict to demonstrate how language structure can influence the clarity and impact of a message. Data for the study are nine excerpts that are purposively selected and qualitatively and quantitatively analysed through insights from Brown and Levinson’s face-threatening acts and Grice’s conversational implicatures. Findings reveal that conversational patterning on the marriage-proposal is as necessity dictates, thus, being constrained by situations. Off-record politeness strategy is the most dominant (66.7%), followed by bald-on-record strategy (33.3%). This distribution indicates that the interlocutors in the play initially prefer indirectness and face-saving strategies, but resort to directness when communicative urgency and emotional intensity require unambiguous expression. The study concludes that situational necessity determines the extent of politeness in African communicative encounters, particularly in socially sensitive contexts such as marriage proposals.