| dc.description.abstract | This research analyses the aesthetics of Luo praise poetry from Siaya District in Nyanza Province by examining their meanings from the community's perspective, their functions, their performances and their forms. A qualitative study was done through a textual analysis of selected poetry through an ethnomethodological approach in order to observe and evaluate each performance within a context. Structuralism theory identified different forms of Luo praise poetry and determined the meanings of symbols while feminist and postcolonial theories analyzed language and themes to determine whether they reflect the societal gender roles, the gender dynamics and the colonial influences on these poems.
The research reveals that Luo praise poetry takes different forms depending on performance, context and the performer, different themes are addressed using different linguistic and paralinguistic strategies, and that the poems are metaphorical with the meanings assigned to individual poems being determined by the target audience. Consequently, these poems have different levels of comprehension that are dependent on the audience, thus different meanings can be assigned to the same poem. In addition, the images of both men and women in these poems reflect the gender roles of the community that are stereotypical, though the image of the woman remains largely positive. The major finding of this study though is that Luo praise poetry are symbolic, with many symbols whose meanings can only be understood from the community's perspective that changes depending on the target audience. This study is recommending that a comparative research is necessary to analyze the various forms of Luo praise poetry to determine their characteristics, functions as well style. | en_US |
