Front cover image for Speaking for the chief : ȯkyeame and the politics of Akan royal oratory

Speaking for the chief : ȯkyeame and the politics of Akan royal oratory

Provides an ethnography of royal rhetoric and the language and politics of representation among the Akan of Ghana. This book shows the connections between verbal strategies and the cultural organization of West African social systems. It shows the art of the okyeame to be not simply a genre of speaking, but a set of cultural practices.
Print Book, English, ©1995
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, ©1995
x, 194 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.
9780253368010, 9780253209467, 0253368014, 0253209463
30919799
1. Introduction
2. Okyeame: A Theoretical Framework
3. Mediation: The Evolution of Royal Diplomacy
4. Oratory in Akan Society
5. Women and Rhetoric
6. Orator and Chief: The Politics of Immunity
7. "Listening So the Chief May Hear": The Circuit of Formal Talk
8. Interpreting the Chief's Word
9. Without His Patron's Voice
Epilogue: The King's Exit
Glossary of Akan Words
Text in English with some text in Akan