A SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF ABUSE TERMS IN IGBO LANGUAGE: A CASE STUDY OF ORLU

This research is a study on the concept of abuse and abuse terms as used
by the Igbos with the Orlu community as a case study. Attention is givento the
different forms that abuses take in the language community. Using the contextual
theory of semantics, this study presents and describes data from Orlu village. Data analyzed shows that abuse terms in the language may be classified into
three different categories based on their association with animals, human
attributes, and evil phenomena. This research details how these abuse terms are
used, their meanings as well as how the contexts of useplay a very vital role in
determining the meaning of an abuse term in sync with the speaker/abuser’s
intention. The findings of this work orderly presented in the last chapter of this
work are useful for both native speakers of Igbo language and can also act as a
source of reference for linguistic researchers in the language and beyond who
seek to further study the nature of abuse as one of the functions to which humans
put languages.