A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of a Yoruba Song-drama

Abstract

This paper presents a multimodal discourse analysis of a story that has been turned into a Yoruba song-drama, highlighting the ideational, interpersonal and textual aspects of the song-drama. The data is a short song-drama meant to teach children importunity, determination and hard work through persistence. The multimodal and narrative conventions used for analysis according to Kress and van Leeuwen (2001), show the need for cooperation and determination in a world that is characterized by individualism. The study reveals that, at the ideational level, information, anticipation, request and insistence are prominent features. At the interpersonal level, the study reveals that the song-drama is a metaphor for the possibility of a better life for the poor and needy in a society full of oppression and selfishness, while the textual level reveals the distribution of information in the different modes- song, drama, and paralinguistic expressions. The study concludes that pedagogically, storytelling, re-telling, writing and rewriting have the capacity to improve pupils’ vocabulary development. ESL teachers could creatively use video watching (which has replaced story telling), storytelling and retelling to launch the present day ESL learners into 21^st century critical thinking and learning activities.