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A study of oriki, or oral praise poetry, which is a major part of both traditional performance and daily Yoruba life.

Yorùbá drum poetry has to date enjoyed an indigenous monopoly. However, its attributes as a unique cultural asset of Africans need to be further exploited for greater relevance to the sophistication and demands of the contemporary age. This essay contends that the resources of Yorùbá drum poetry are currently grossly under-utilized; it further asserts that for any art to thrive it must remain dynamic. Suggestions are therefore made concerning various current uses to which the valued resources of Yorùbá drum poetry can be put in order to achieve global relevance. Highlighted here are various means by which the mass media, the advertising and music industries, the government, NGOs, and international organizations can benefit from a more aggressive exploitation of the resources of drum poetry.

Non-conventional meanings associated with some forms used in a class of anthroponyms (Yorùbá personal-names, henceforth Y P N s) can only be understood in the context of a metaphoric system. This claim is based on the fact that the corpus involved is wholly mono-morphemic and thus belong to the semantic category of connotative meaning. But YPNs also maintain a system of lexico-semantic idiosyncracy on the morphological and semantic levels (i.e. lexical formation and interpretation), and it is only through the interpretations adduced from them that they can be relevant as anthroponyms. This study, therefore, not only reports the strange sense-relation of form and meaning as attested to in a set of YPNs, it also illustrates a number of sociocultural indices which underlie their formulations and usages. The study concludes by positing that the semantic values of YPNs transcend mere identification labels and are found to communicate arrays of information about Yorùbá folk-psychology and sociocultural realities.

The thrust of this paper is that, just like any other society, the Yoruba royal court draws its communication strength from both the verbal and non-verbal codes to govern the citizenry. The paper sheds light on judicious use and insensible use of discourse codes associated with the palace as exhibited in the Yoruba video films, with special emphasis on verbal utterances, symbol-communication and telegraphic codes vis a vis Yoruba traditional governance. ; O foco deste trabalho é que, como qualquer outra sociedade, a corte real ioruba extrai sua força de comunicação tanto de códigos verbais quanto de códigos não-verbais, para assim governar seus cidadãos. O trabalho elucida o uso criterioso e inconsciente dos códigos discursivos associados ao palácio (associados à corte) como exibido no vídeo/filme ioruba, com ênfase especial nos enunciados verbais, comunicação simbólica e códigos telegráficos confrontados com o modo de governo tradicional ioruba.