Gifting the Dead: An Ethnopragmatic Analysis of the Adwaadeɛ ‘Bathing Items’ Ritual in Asante
Dorothy Pokua Agyepong
Abstract: This paper discusses the adwaadeɛ ‘bathing items’ donation as a crucial aspect of Asante funerals. It explores this ritual from a postcolonial (ethno)pragmatic perspective by focusing on the language used during the ritual, multimodal aspects such clothing colours and what they signify as well as the individual items donated and their significance. In terms of the language, the paper concentrates on the speech act sequence, setting, participants, structure of the language, the lexical items used, and other stylistic devices (Saville-Troike 2003; Hymes 1968). It is shown that similar to findings from Agyekum (2008) with respect to nsawa ‘lit. small drink (money donated at funerals)’, the orator in the adwaadeɛ donation plays a very important role. She employs language embellished with honorifics, address forms, proverbs, and hyperboles. The data for this study is based on videos recorded during an ethnographic study between the years 2020 and 2021.
Keywords: adwaadeɛ, Postcolonial ethnopragmatics, ethnography of communication, multimodality, Asante