INTRODUCTION
This article addresses ntam ‘reminiscential
oath’ as a verbal taboo among the Akan of Ghana. Akan belongs to
the Kwa group of languages found in West Africa. It is the indigenous
language with the largest number of speakers in Ghana, as well as the
largest percentages of both L1 and L2 speakers. According to the Ghana
2000 population census, 49.1% of the national population of 18.8
million are Akans (Daily Graphic 2001:1).
Ntam may be considered as a form of oath. It is an evocation
of the past unpleasant experiences of a people and of the state. Within
Searle's (1969) typology of speech acts,
ntam oaths are a type of commissive, but with the
special quality of having statutory force. That is, ntam oaths
are used in institutional contexts at the highest level of the Akan
state, as well as in less important institutional contexts, as
discussed below. I will argue that the meaning of a speech act like
ntam is best captured and analyzed within the sociocultural
context rather than from a personalistic perspective. It is the social
world that shapes the things we do or say with words by linking
language with the personality and society (cf. Rosaldo 1982:228).1
Nwoye 1992 aptly states that
“unlike Western societies in which atomistic individualism is the
expected norm of behaviour, among the Igbo of Nigeria, concerns for
group interests override those of an individual.”
I will refer to ntam as a “reminiscential oath by
evocation,” quite different from religious or legal oaths. I will
continue to use the indigenous term ntam after I have defined
the notion. I will discuss the theory behind the ntam taboo,
the basic types of ntam, and situations for the use of
ntam with or without sanctions. This essay concentrates on
situations in which the unspeakable, or taboo, ntam becomes
speakable without any sanctions. Brief mention will be made of the
history and origins of ntam, a complete account of which would
form another article; here, I focus instead on the language, form,
structure, style, and the pragmatics of ntam, supporting the
discussion with specific data from my fieldwork.
METHODOLOGY
The materials presented here were collected using the methods of the
ethnography of communication. I collected most of the data from
arbitrations at the Manhyia Palace of the king of Asante between
February and July 1994. Arbitrations are traditional courts where civil
disputes of all kinds are deliberated – land and chieftaincy
disputes, marriage cases, assault, invective (see the next section),
theft, and similar matters. In all these cases, ntam oaths are
used to assert the principles' views, and also by witnesses to
bind themselves to speak the truth. The jury is made up of the chief or
king of the locality and his elders.
I also interviewed renowned akyeame ‘chief's
spokesmen’ and other elders at the palace and other places within
the Akan community. In addition, I sent questionnaires to final-year
students at the University College of Education, Winneba, for them to
administer during the Easter holidays of 1994.2
The present article is drawn from my 1996 M. Phil. thesis on Akan verbal taboos, presented
to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
AKAN VERBAL TABOOS: WOEFUL THINGS
The Akan term
‘woeful things or
expressions’ is used for verbal taboos. I cite below such forms
of verbal taboo in Akan. In Agyekum 1996, I
identify various categories of verbal taboos in Akan, including
ntam ‘reminiscential oath’. Other categories
include
‘grievance imprecation,’ which
involves the invocation of a deity to unleash divine wrath or a curse
on the target or wrongdoer (see Agyekum
1999). The opposite of this verbal taboo is nsedie
‘assertive self-imprecation oath’. There is also
atennidie ‘invective’, especially forms of
invective that negatively refer to the origin and genealogy, deformity,
ill health, or sexual organs of the addressee. All these taboo
categories can be aptly referred to as
‘woeful things’ because their outcome can be
distasteful.
Of all the taboos mentioned, the closest to ntam is
nsedie ‘assertive self-imprecation oath’. Both are
oaths used to assert a stand, and they commit the speaker to say
nothing but the truth or to abide by his or her words. Both of them key
to a solemn and serious mood. They are both used in local arbitration.
The difference between them can be characterized as follows. (i)
Nsedie is a religious oath, invocative in the sense that the
speaker calls down the wrath of a supernatural being to punish the
speaker himself or herself if what is asserted is perjury. (ii)
Ntam is reminiscential and evokes past memories and unpleasant
situations that are dangerous to the community; it thus carries
listeners back into the history of the people (see Agyekum 1996, chap. 2)
OATHS IN THE BIBLE AND IN WESTERN SOCIETIES
This section gives a brief overview of oaths in the Bible and in
Western societies. Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary
(1989:993) defines an oath as “a solemn appeal to God, or to some
revered person or thing, to witness one's determination to speak
the truth or to keep a promise.” We will see that oaths work like
ntam in that they index a community of people who believe in
such a higher power and in the force of the oaths.
Oaths in the Bible
According to the New Geneva Study Bible (1995:670), “Oaths are solemn declarations
invoking God as a witness to statements and promises, inviting Him to
punish anything false.” The underlying factor here is that oaths
bind the speaker to speak the truth, and failure to do that will offend
God.
In the book of Nehemiah, chap. 5, the Hebrew governor Nehemiah deals
with the oppressed and wants the rich to restore to them their lands,
vineyards, houses, money, and other properties. When he calls them,
they agree to restitution, but to make it binding he asks them to swear
an oath. This is recorded as follows: “So they said, ‘We
will restore it, and will require nothing from them; we will do as you
say.’ ” Nehemiah recounts, “Then I called the priests
and required an oath from them that they would do according to this
promise” (Neh. 5:12).
In the book of Ezra, we are told that the Israelites confessed that
some had taken pagan wives and wanted to make covenant with God to put
away all those wives. They went to Ezra to commit themselves to
supporting him in this, and to ask him to see to it that it be done.
“Then Ezra arose, and made the leaders of the priests, the
Levites, all Israel swear an oath that they would do according to his
word. So they swore an oath” (Ezra 10:5).
In the New Testament as well, we encounter oaths. In Mathew
26:72–74, Peter denies that he knows Jesus, supporting his
assertion against doubters with an oath: “Then he began to invoke
a curse on himself and to swear, ‘I do not know the man.’
”
Acts 23:11–12 tells how people plotted to kill Paul, binding
themselves by an oath: “And when it was day, some of the Jews
banded together and bound themselves under an oath, saying that they
would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul.”
There are cases in the Bible in which God swears an oath to his
people. A divine oath is expressed in Psalm 110:4: “The Lord has
sworn and will not relent.” This was interpreted by Christians as
demonstrating the unchangeable permanence of the new priesthood of
Jesus. This was supported by reference to Hebrews 6:13–17,
7:20–21; for example, “Thus God determining to show more
abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel,
confirmed it by an oath” (Heb. 6:17).
It could be deduced from the examples above that oaths in biblical
times had an inherent power to bind a speaker to abide by what he or
she said. An oath's force does not respect the status of the
speaker. Apart from the examples given above, there are many additional
instances in the Bible of the use of oaths, for example in Luke
1:73–74, Mathew 5:33–34, Genesis 24:1–9, 1 Samuel
14:26, Ecclesiastes 8:2, and Jeremiah 11:5 and 42:18.
Oaths in Western society
Oath-taking in Europe and the Near East originated from religious
customs, but it became extended to secular settings, especially in law
courts and other legal proceedings, with the particular usage varying
from country to country. Oath-taking dates at least as far back as the
Sumerian civilization (4th to 3rd millennia bce) of the
ancient Middle East, and to ancient Egypt. At that time people often
swore by their life; Egyptian ankh ‘oath’ means
‘an utterance of life’. The words for ‘oath’ in
many Indo-European languages, including English oath, are
reflexes of Proto-Indo-European
*h1óitos ‘a
going’, specialized to the meaning ‘oath’ in
Celtic and Germanic with reference to the practice of walking between
parts of slaughtered animals to give force to the oath (Mallory & Adams 1997:408). Oaths were also
taken by invoking sacred watercourses of the underworld, combining
associations with water and lightning (Mallory &
Adams 1997:409). The force of such allusions makes clear that
the oath was intended as an absolute guarantee of the word and intent
of the person swearing, and also the fetter that bound him to the
truth. This implies that it is not the mere mentioning of the oath that
is important, but the implicational bond that it entails and the
obligation it casts on the speaker. In Latin, the term for oath is
ius iurandum ‘sworn law’; in Roman society, oaths
were firmly established legal instruments with statutory force (see
Klinger 1987:302). Benveniste 1973 concludes that the expression
refers to the rigid enforcement of the procedure of the oath, which was
itself a sacramentum, an engagement made before the gods.
Among the Hittites, there were “oath gods” and others
seen as gods of contract (i.e., the guardians of oath and truth).
Judaism distinguishes two kinds of improper oaths: a vain oath, whereby
one attempts to do something that is too difficult to achieve or
attempts to negate the fulfillment of a religious precept; and a false
oath, in which one uses the name of God to swear falsely, thus
committing a sacrilege. In Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, oaths are
still widely used today. An oath in Islam is called qasam; one
typically swears on his life, soul, honor, or faith. This primarily
constitutes a pledge to God, and so a false oath is considered a danger
to one's soul.
In Greek religion, the institutions of oath, religion, and morality
and the organization of society were inextricably linked. According to
Burkert (1985:250), “The function of an
oath is to guarantee that a statement is absolutely binding, whether it
be a statement about something in the past or a declaration of an
intent for the future.” In a culture like Akan, which was until
recently without writing, with no records to serve as proof and no
legal documents, the binding nature of oath was of unique importance,
and it still is. This implies that there is an extension of the
illocutionary speech act into a kind of statutory force.
NTAM AS AN OATH
One striking feature of the Akan ntam oath is that it is not
based on religion. It is “reminiscential” in that it evokes
past unpleasant events in Akan society. One of the important questions
to which the study of oaths like ntam contributes is that of
precisely how statutory force becomes available. I suggest that the
language of the oath is statutory, rather than a mere simple
commissive, and that its force is available because it
“socializes” the commitment made. It binds the oath-taker
to the community, and vice versa. This is done by evoking shared
memories and moral commitments and by indexing a community within which
these are significant.
The civil functions of the ntam oath are comparable to those
of the Greek oath. The Akan ntam oath governs the laws of the
state. It dominates penal law and civil law and thus plays an important
regulatory and monitoring role in the practical life of individuals and
of the society as a whole (see Burkert
1985:252). Ntam is important in court deliberations,
commercial dealings, land issues, other legal transactions, and the
settlement of family, clan, and chieftaincy disputes.
In ntam, the swearer pledges, binds, and commits himself or
herself to the apodictic propositions in the oath, and as a result, the
assertions mentioned in his oath can be demanded of him. This is aptly
stated by Klinger:
An oath is a promise made before some institutional
authority. In taking an oath, a person not only assumes an obligation
but also becomes liable to prosecution; the state and society have an
interest in his act. Oaths serve as objective guarantees of what is
promised. Swearing to tell the truth, one guarantees that what one says
is true. Oaths are self-endorsing. It is a best verification of the
truth. (1987:301)
This description captures the statutory nature of oaths that include
the Akan ntam. In swearing in public to assert the truth, the
oath-taker invites the society before which the oath is uttered to
guarantee that what is said is the truth. Searle
1969 therefore added truth to his criteria for
illocutionary acts and considered sincerity an essential quality for
speaking. The person taking the ntam oath commits himself or
herself to sincerity. In the case of ntam, however, we can see
an important additional dimension of the oath: its social dimension.
The entire society demands sincerity from the speaker and also believes
that the evocation of ntam presupposes the truth. This is the
case because the events, and the society itself in the form of those
people for whom the events mentioned are significant and dangerous, are
evoked and indexed in the moment of taking the oath. Thus, while Akans
seem to share standards of “sincerity” that would be
recognizable to Searle, the social distribution of responsibility
accomplished in ntam goes beyond his account of commissives.
Searle's commissives have a strong focus on individual sincerity,
but ntam commissives include a complicit audience that shares
responsibility for the fulfillment of the act to which the utterer of
ntam commits. Ntam indexicalizes and reproduces
social memories that affect the entire society.
Duranti 1993 discusses a Samoan theory of
speaking in an important instance of the “antipersonalist”
critique of speech act theory. Samoans do not attach importance to the
private meaning of utterances. Duranti writes, “Samoans practice
interpretation as a way of publicly controlling social
relationships.” The same antipersonalist critique is put forward
by Rosaldo:
The meanings carried by our words must thus depend not just
on what we say, but who we are and what we hope our interlocutors know.
The speech act theory fails because it thinks of “doing things
with words” as the achievement of autonomous selves, whose deeds
are not significantly constrained by the relationships and expectations
that define the social world. The theory fails because it does not
comprehend the sociality of individuals who use its “rules”
and “resources” to act. (1982:204)
Based on the above assertions, I claim that words do not emanate from
individuals but from many social contexts and settings. A speech act
like ntam requires the participation of a certain type of
audience. The meaning of an instance of ntam is seen as the
product of an interaction and not necessarily as something sited in one
person's mind. If an individual swears a ntam in privacy,
it has no social impact until it is made public (see also Hill & Irvine 1993:9).
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The ntam taboo can be analyzed most appropriately within the
framework of speech act theory (Austin 1962,
Searle 1969). Under this theory, some of the
pertinent questions to be asked are: (i) How binding is an expression
in language? (ii) What is the nature of the binding force, and what is
the source? (iii) What is its impact on the speaker? (iv) What is its
impact on the audience?
I will argue that among speakers of Akan, language itself is a
binding force, and it has power and “ignition” analogous to
those of a mechanical engine. The idea that language has
“force” and “power” in language is made
explicit in Austin's and Searle's theory of speech acts, but
as pointed out many years ago by Malinowski, in many societies a
commitment to this idea is both implicit and explicit in local ideas
about how language works. The power of the spoken word is clearly
recognized by Akan speakers when they establish a category of verbal
taboos (see Agyekum 1996).
As expressed in the etymology of the word oath, people with
this idea recognize that language can be used as a bond that may allow,
prohibit, or restrain people with reference to certain designated acts.
Various pacts, covenants, and treaties among nations, tribes, clans,
and individuals are captured through language. Agreements on
disarmament, rules, regulations, and commandments are all encapsulated
through the binding force and power of language. People are committed
to the language and must obey its contents. In such cases, one can
argue, language is mightier than the sword.
Ntam as a speech act
In this article, distinction is made between a ntam event
and a ntam speech act. The ntam event is the
situation that triggers the use of ntam, as we will see below.
The ntam speech act is the evocation of the ntam
taboo utterance and the use of performative verbs. The ntam
speech act and its paralinguistic features are integral parts of the
whole ntam communicative event. The speaker performs the
speech act in a serious mood, and the participants become solemn.
Ntam falls directly into the category of commissives;
however, certain types of ntam communicative events may employ
speech acts of other categories, such as directives. A commissive is a
speech act in which the speaker is committed in some degree to the
truth of the proposition his utterance expresses, and it necessarily
involves intention (Searle 1969). Commissives
commit the speaker to some posterior or future action; that is, the
speaker commits himself or herself to performing an action at a time
later than that of the utterance (see Leech
1983:206). Commissive verbs include promise, vow, swear,
offer, volunteer, pledge, contract, bid, bet, accept, and
assure (see Duranti 1997:224, Coulthard 1992:24).
The display in the speech act of commitment to some future action
must be separated from the fulfillment of the act. This is why, in
cases of inappropriate or perjured ntam, social censure can be
exercised, as discussed below.
Searle 1969 emphasizes the illocutionary
force of speech acts and introduces the term fit. According to
him, “fit” expresses the relationship between our words and
the world we live in. We can deduce that physical things and concrete
behavior such as violence are transformed into abstractions in the form
of language, and when the language is used, it presupposes the
performance of the act referenced. This phenomenon can be captured as
follows:
This means therefore that world is fitted to words, and words may
also be fitted to the world. There is thus a strong relationship
between the world, which is reality, and the word, which is
language.
According to Mey (1993:132), “Through
the use of words I make the word fit my language and change the world
in accordance with my directions as given through the use of
language.” A person's commissives effect a change in the
world by creating an obligation in the speaker. The speaker of a
ntam therefore creates an obligation on his or her own part to
abide by what is said in the proposition, and also targets the
truth.
DEFINITION AND AKAN CONCEPT OF
NTAM TABOO
The nominal ntam is derived from the verb tam
‘lift’ plus the nominalizing prefix n-. The derived
noun ntam literally means ‘lifting up, wrestling,
struggling, grappling with’. The verb tam in its
predicative function implies the lifting of heavy objects. The word
ntam thus implies grappling with an object that is heavy,
burdensome, and difficult to lift, and thus a task that requires
considerable effort, caution, and energy.
The word ntam refers to historical experiences and events in
the life of the Akan people of Ghana that literally are “very
difficult for the mouth to lift,” much less to talk about –
quite a mouthful, as the English speaker would say. Ntam can
refer to any experience or event that has happened to an individual, a
family, or a whole state in the past. It may have occurred during a
war; it may be an epidemic, a plague, a famine, a tragic accident, or
an unexpected death. In ancient times, the Akans avoided referring to
such events lest the spirits of their dead ancestors should rise and
take revenge, because their agonies and painful experiences had been
recalled. K. A. Busia, a renowned sociologist, writes:
The important thing is that the oaths allude to distasteful
incidents or tribal disasters connected with the ancestors. It is a
taboo to allude to these misfortunes, because the ancestors are either
annoyed or aggrieved by the recollection of their disaster and this
estranges them from the community. There is also the fear that the use
of the oath may cause repetition of the misfortune to fall on the
successors of the ancestors. (1968:75–78).
The ntam oath, therefore, symbolically serves as a set
formula alluding covertly to the tragic incident (cf. Mensah-Brown 1976, Braffi 1984:39–43, E. Obeng 1988:59–62).
It is fascinating to note that, even though ntam is a taboo
and hence “unmentionable,” it is mentioned and understood
in certain identifiable contexts. Ntam thus constitutes an
especially powerful and interesting form of social memory and
reproduction of history that draws people into a common understanding
of their history. When ntam is evoked, all present will be
drawn to index an important piece of shared knowledge. We can thus
consider ntam as one of the Akan oral art forms by which
important sociocultural and historical information is stored (see Connerton 1989).
Furthermore, by “mentioning the unmentionable” and thus
rendering the audience complicit in recognition of it, ntam
not only reproduces social memories but also establishes the audience
as a party to the oath. This creation of a complicit audience is one of
the mechanisms by which ntam rises beyond the quotidian level
of ordinary commissives to achieve its statutory power.
The Akans consider ntam oaths as recalling mournful events,
dark secrets, weaknesses, and shortcomings of the people that should
not be resurrected from the past. The expression “Let sleeping
dogs lie” is an apt description of the rationale behind the
ntam taboo. In old times, people would fast for several days
after such past experiences were mentioned in public. The swearing of a
ntam oath reminded the elders or others present of their past
shame, misfortune, nightmares, or sorrowful historical events. The
recollection often brought tears to the cheeks of the elders. It is the
agony behind ntam ‘reminiscential oath’ that makes
it a verbal taboo.
The expression meka ntam ‘I swear by the
ntam’ is itself a euphemism. It is an aspect of
politeness to avoid the use of the actual forbidden referent (see
Rattray 1969a: 215). If one says
,
it is enough to understand its reference. Since
the referents, the “unfortunate historical experiences,”
are either understood explicitly or assumed to be understood
implicitly, speakers rarely ever mention them overtly. Over time, the
taboo expressions have not only become pivotal in the taboo system but
have also lost their explicit referents for most people. Referents of
ntam are known only to those within the inner circle of the
family or the state. This is the indirect aspect of the ntam
taboo. Note, then, that the “complicit audience,” those who
are drawn into the project of socialization that establishes the
statutory force of ntam, are themselves indexed by the
utterance of the oath. Thus, not only is social memory reproduced in
the making of the oath, but the group of people who share that memory
are also projected and reasserted when it is uttered.
Ntam ‘reminiscential oaths’ can be considered as
a system of language use among the Akan by means of which the shared
tribulations of a family, clan, or state are evoked as a form of social
power and control over the remaining members of the group on both
formal and informal occasions. The utterances are considered
inappropriate in contexts of joyful commemoration and reminiscence.
Rather, they remind people of the sad event, but they do not mention
the event explicitly, since this is taboo to mention explicitly in
public or in private, to any audience.
The most important aspects of ntam that makes it a verbal
taboo are the magical power of the spoken word, face threat,
importance, and danger of the denotatum with which the
taboo word is associated. It is believed that the utterance of a
ntam word has the magical power to bring about the
reoccurrence of the same event, or a similar event. It ultimately
touches on the emotions of the people, reminds them of past
predicaments, and thus disturbs them psychologically. In all the cases
that relate to the notion of ntam that I observed at the
Manhyia Palace in Asante, indigenous perceptions were constantly
repeated to show the importance the Akan people attach to the concept.
The statement below, made by a chief during arbitration at the Manhyia
Palace in April 1994, evidences this:
Although ntam as a concept is logically and semantically an
abstract noun, there are various lexical, syntactic, and semantic
structures and expressions that portray ntam as real, or
concrete, and thus fit the word to the world. Ntam is
considered as an enduring, metaphorically deified element that has
perpetual life like God or any other deity, and that must be
worshipped. It is beyond reproach and unquestionable and should be
attended to. These concepts denote that the society requires people to
continue to revere ntam. The Akans depict ntam as a
positive, powerful, valuable concept, the strongest verbal taboo that
should not be trivialized (cf. Yankah
1995:50). There are therefore admonitions and sanctions against
the downgrading of ntam. For example, a person who does so may
be asked to pay a small fine in money or drink.
BASIC TYPES OF NTAM
Ntam can be classified according to the scope and the
gravity of their penalties into ntankumaa ‘minor
ntam’ and
‘major ntam’. They may also be categorized according
to the appropriateness or manner of their use and performance; thus, we
have ntanhunu ‘inappropriate ntam’,
ntampa ‘appropriate ntam’, and
‘stalemate ntam’.
The distinction between the minor and major ntam taboos is
based on the nature of the various jurisprudential settings in the Akan
society. They begin with the house, with the family head as the chief
justice and the elders of the family as the members of the jury. At the
village level, the chief is the chief justice and the members of the
jury are the various family heads. The various chiefs of the
traditional area constitute the members of the jury at the paramountcy
level, with the paramount chief as the presiding officer and chief
justice. At the level of traditional states like Asante, Akyem, Bono,
and others, the respective king is the lord of the judiciary, and the
members are the paramount chiefs.
Every ntam has limited scope and jurisdiction of operation,
no matter how powerful it may be to its users. If a ntankumaa
is a taboo of a village, a town or a state, then it is also restricted
to such areas. Only people who serve under the chiefs of a particular
area are bound by such a ntam, and it is only the political
head that can try such ntam cases. Furthermore, such a
ntam is invalid outside the area of its jurisdiction. Among
the Akan, one cannot evoke his or her geographical area's
ntam to prove his or her case in another place that has its
own ntam taboo system. The Akan says,
‘we do not travel with a reminiscential oath’.
Ntankumaa ‘minor reminiscential
oaths’
Ntankumaa are the oaths pertaining to individuals,
households, families, and localities such as small towns and villages.
In the household, the custodian of the ntam is the head of the
family, usually the oldest surviving member.
Ntankumaa originated from tragedies, real or legendary,
which tradition claims befell particular small towns, villages,
families, or individuals. Every family and every individual can have
his or her own ntam. Examples of some individual ntam
may stem from barrenness, impotence, serious diseases like epilepsy or
leprosy, or physical and mental disabilities. Here are some
examples:
‘major reminiscential oaths’
are the oaths pertaining to various ethnic
groups such as the Akuapem, Asante, Akyem, or Bono. Some refer to them as
‘red reminiscential oath’
(i.e., ‘serious oath’). The color red in Akan society
signifies danger, doom, or damnation, and it indicates symbolically
that such reminiscential oaths are very dangerous or tricky to use and
must be handled with great caution.
Every traditional state in Akan and every akonnwa tuntum
‘black stool’ has its own ntam. (The wooden stool
is the symbol of office for Akan chiefs and kings; every chief has
one.) According to the Akan, the state oaths came into being with the
expansion of families into clans and further into states. In this
process of expansion, the misfortunes and mishaps that previously were
limited to the family now became the concern of the whole state, and
the wrath invoked by their mention would now affect the king or chief
and the whole state.
In this larger domain, the king became the owner and custodian of the
ntam. In all the state ntam I compiled, the origin
typically had to do with an unfortunate experience or a tragedy that
affected a king, a queen, another royal, or some other important figure
in the political administration of the state. The event might be a
disaster such as the death of the king in battle or the decimation of
an army, a plague, or an epidemic that affected a whole state. The
unmentionability (or taboo) of an oath was intended to avert the
reoccurrence of the tragic event.
The state ntam are established unspeakable linguistic items,
each with its own origin. These items, unlike all other expressions in
the language and culture, have limited scope of distribution and usage.
They may not be used in ordinary conversation. There are prohibitions,
inhibitions, sanctions, punishments, penalties, and rituals attached to
them.
Categories of appropriateness
Ntam may also be categorized according to the
appropriateness of their use and performance into ntanhunu
‘inappropriate’, ntampa,
‘appropriate’, and
‘stalemate’.
3 The
ntam stalemate is an oath against oath in normal judicial
proceedings. The plaintiff swears his or her indictment, and the
defendant asserts his or her innocence with a counter-oath. The jury
would then have to decide on this divergent swearing and arbitrate the
case to find out the truth.
Ntanhunu ‘inappropriate reminiscential oath’
refers to any taboo ntam that is spoken in an inappropriate
context. Ntanhunu literally means ‘empty oath’.
Since ntam is a taboo expression and can be mentioned only
when there is actual need for it, anybody who swears an oath in the
wrong context or in falsehood is said to have used a verbal taboo
inappropriately. This is perjury and must be punished accordingly. Here
is an example of ntanhunu:
Ntanhunu can also refer to a situation in which one has
sworn an oath but cannot explain the reasons behind the swearing. When
it is perceived that she or he is joking with the ntam, it is
consequently declared an ntanhunu ‘empty reminiscential
oath’ or ‘taking an oath in vain’. This article,
however, focuses on ntampa, discussed in detail in a later
section.
Ntanhunu attracts many punishments. In the olden days, a
person who swore a ntanhunu could be killed. In the present
day, such a person may incur various punishments and sanctions such as
the payment of a fine, providing drinks, or slaughtering a sheep. These
depend on the seriousness of the offense, the power of the stool that
owns the ntam, and the political status of the ntam
that has been spoken.
PRAGMATICS AND STYLISTICS OF NTAM
This section looks at the pragmatics and stylistics of ntam.
It also discusses their internal structure.
Internal structure and stylistics of ntam
activity
I will now examine the internal structure of a ntam
utterance by looking at how the words are arranged in linear order.
This refers to the acts sequence of the ntam activity. A
prototypical ntam in Akan has the following structure:
This is exemplifed by the following utterance:
The Akan ntam expression thus has the following components:
(i) a protactic proposition, (ii) an interpretive
marker
‘that’, (iii) an
apodictic proposition, and (iv) a commissive
proposition. In most ntam expressions, the commissive
proposition is implicit, as seen in (6).
The protactic proposition is the introductory proposition that
encodes the verbal taboo – the performative and the evocation, as in
‘I swear by the great
oath’. It serves as a guarantee of the truth condition of the
apodictic proposition.
4 The protactic
component of ntam is devoid of figurative language, idiomatic
expressions, or evasive language. It goes contrary to the indirection
strategies discussed by Obeng 1994, 1997. There is no stylistic way of phrasing the
evocative parts in order to avoid punishment: One either utters it and
faces the necessary sanctions, or one avoids it. All my informants
confirmed that ntam is a univocal “expression.”
Opanin Yaw Nsia of Assisiriwa cleverly put it: “
,
lit. ‘As for ntam, if you turn it any other way it is not
possible, it stays alone in its house.’
In the Akan
system, if the protactic contains a taboo expression, the apodictic
proposition must necessarily be true, for it is believed that the
speaker is using the
ntam to assert the truth. The oath
component makes the commissive more serious and elevated. The
commissive aspect embodied in the oath makes the oath institutional,
more deified, revered, and dangerous, and hence a verbal taboo. The
oath and the commissive define the institutional site as sacred. It is
a situation in which the speaker, by his or her language, directs the
world to make his or her statement and assertion more believable.
The interpretive marker
‘that (complementizer)’ marks or introduces the apodictic
proposition (see Sperber & Wilson 1995:224–31 on interpretive uses).
The apodictic proposition is defined here as the actual statement for
the purpose of which the speaker has been prompted to speak the
forbidden word – that is, the reasons for the use of the
ntam. It is the kernel and stimulus of the whole ntam
expression and comes after
.
The commissive proposition binds the speaker to whatever is said. In
a major ntam, the commissive may also mention the punishment
to be meted out to a speaker who fails to comply with the contents and
obligations of the oath. The example in (7) contains all the
constituent parts discussed above:
In (7), the performative part is Meka Mamponhene Yawoada. It
is followed by
,
the interpretive marker. The apodictic
proposition is fused with the commissive in the expression
‘I will serve you’, a pledge that represents the
speaker's intention to serve the addressee (a king), without which
there would be no need to utter the taboo word ntam. In
effect, it is the core of the whole ntam expression. The final
part is the commissive proposition, mebu so a, meto ntam
‘failure to do that I violate the oath’; this spells out
the punishment that concretizes the commissive. The terms
“protactic” and “apodictic” propositions have
also been used in connection with similar Akan verbal taboos (see Agyekum 1996, chaps. 3, 4; Agyekum 1999.)
Stylistics and pragmatics of
‘major reminiscential oaths’
This section pays particular attention to politeness strategies and
performative acts, analyzing major
because they are more powerful and their structures demand some aspects of
speech act principles and politeness. The most basic formulaic form
used in speaking about
is exemplified in (8):
In (8), the speaker says, in effect, “I seek permission to use
great reminiscential oath to swear
by the great oath.” In such an instance,
becomes an instrument that the speaker now uses as a prelude
(or seeking permission) to utter the taboo word ntam.
In terms of personal pronouns as anaphoric references, the
prototypical ntam utterance in both the major and minor
ntam has 1st person singular me ‘I’ as
the subject of ntam statement. The ntam being
referred to must have some formal grammatical relationship that
referentially indexicalizes either the speaker or the
addressee in the speech communication. Reference to third parties is
barred in Akan oath-taking, because the one on whose behalf it is sworn
could deny responsibility for the use of the taboo or for its
consequences. Such an act loses the aspect of commitment on the part of
the swearer (see Silverstein 1976:27 for
referential and nonreferential indexes). It would be inappropriate to
make an ntam utterance like that in (9):
5 In ex. (9), the 1st person pl. pronoun is
‘we’. It is too general in reference for
any action or breach of the taboo to be made the responsibility of any
single member of the group. If a group of people is going to use a
ntam taboo in a given context, only one of them will utter the
ntam, using the 1st person sg. The speaker is assumed to be
acting on behalf of all the rest, and the sanctions and punishment
evolving out of the ntam will be binding on the group as a
whole. This is in line with the group notion of face discussed by Obeng
(1999:715). If the other members cannot be
traced for some reason, there will be a swearer in propria
persona to hold for the breach of the ntam if the need
should arise.
The prototypical formula in ntam has an explicit and
obligatory commisive performative verb ka ‘swear’
which functions as an initiating verb to the evocation of the taboo
word ntam. The verb ka ‘swear’ is a
commissive speech act verb. It has locutionary force that makes the
agent involve himself or herself in uttering a ntam taboo
expression. Its illocutionary force defines the intention of the
speaker to perform a communicative activity that commits him or her in
speaking the ntam, and its perlocutionary force indicates the
effects that the utterance of the ntam may have on the
listeners (see also Searle 1969; Bach & Harnish 1979; Crystal 1991:323; Levinson 1983:236; Coulthard 1992:18–19; Blakemore
1992; Mey 1993:113). The
perlocutionary force of the ntam also brings about the
reminiscence of the past deeds of the ntam and the solemnity
therein. Among the Akan, the perlocutionary act includes the rituals
(sacrifice of sheep, drinks, etc.) connected with the ntam
that give the ntam its significance.
Use of the apologetic tag
in major ntam
The major ntam has an obligatory performative verb
‘beg’ (or ‘request’). I wish to
draw attention to the social significance of the use of this verb in
major ntam. The Akan word
can be glossed as ‘apologize, beg for, or request’. For our
analysis, we are combining request and apology, since the speaker apologizes
and also requests permission for using the taboo expression. In this case,
the speaker combines expressive (apology) and directive (request). The
speech act of apology is an aspect of appropriateness and politeness in
speech, and the
verb carries that. The speech act of
apology as an expressive captures the feelings and attitudes of the
speaker, who thus expresses regret, admits the offense, assumes
responsibility, minimizes the offense or responsibility, and offers
compensation.
In the case of the ntam performance in (9), the use of
implies that the speaker expresses regret and admits
the offense and responsibility of reminding society of the
unmentionable, something that brings into mind a past unpleasant
situation and may even bring about its repetition. Since the situation
demands the evocation of the ntam taboo to assert a fact or
claim, the use of the
‘apology’ is meant to
tactfully minimize the offensive power of the taboo. It is also meant
as a verbal compensation for the evocation of the taboo (see Kasper 1994:3209). According to Holmes (1995:155), “An apology is a speech act
addressed to an interactant's face needs and intended to remedy an
offence for which the addressor takes responsibility, and thus to
restore equilibrium between the apologiser and the person
offended.”
The verb
,
which connotes both apology and request in
Akan ntam, may also have the following as core pragmatic
implications: The speaker employs politeness, apology, and persuasion.
According to Obeng (1999: 710),
“Apologising is a face threatening for the speaker, whereas it is
face saving for the hearer. Apologies are face supportive acts and have
positive effect on the recipient or addressee.” In the speech act
of apology, the speaker of ntam tries as much as possible to
protect and save his or her face so as to be considered as a
communicatively competent speaker within the Akan social context. This
is intended to indicate the politeness and good upbringing of the
speaker. The speaker maintains face by alerting the audience that the
upcoming expression is a taboo, an inherently face-threatening act for
which the speaker must be pardoned. The pardon is directed to the taboo
word. The apology implies that the speaker should not be misconstrued
as rude and uncaring, as verbally assaulting the audience by reminding
them of past woes. The speaker therefore prefaces the utterance with
the apologetic tag
to express warm and positive concern, and that shows politeness. In addition,
the use of
‘I beg or apologize’ serves to mitigate
the force of the impending face-threatening act. The appropriate
deployment of such a dualism leads to persuasion and politeness.
In discussing apology in the context of face and politeness, Obeng
(1999:715) states, “Face and politeness
among the Akan is a phenomenon belonging to the level of the society
and of the individual.” Individual members who break and violate
ntam taboos bring shame, disgrace, blame, punishment, and
hardship on themselves, their families, and sometimes the entire Akan
community. The reason for this is the belief that if the ntam
is not well addressed, the unpleasant event can reoccur owing to the
power of the spoken word. An apology event in an ntam speech
act is therefore something that concerns not only the ntam
speaker but also the entire Akan community within which the
ntam is evoked. The need for the apology also stems from the
fact that invoking the ntam puts everybody slightly in danger;
it is a face-threatening act because it is dreadful to make the entire
society revisit the contents of a ntam.
The value and application of politeness and what counts as politeness
depend on the discourse domain and the participants involved. The given
context of politeness is also socioculturally and historically
determined. In the case of Akan ntam, the politeness,
deference, and formality accorded to the “personified”
ntam is based on the historical event to which the
ntam label alludes, and on the custodian (the king) and his
power.
The speaker uses the polite forms as nonreferential indexes
6 Nonreferential indexes indicate the
sociological relations of the participants in a speech event –
inequalities of status, rank, age, sex, and deference. Referential
indexes, by contrast, indicate grammatical categories like tense,
aspect, number, and person that are embodied in the structure of the
sentence (cf. Silverstein 1976:29–30).
to show reverence for
the authorities by maximizing their status and debasing himself or
herself. The purpose or goal of the speaker is to beg to use an
ntam that is beyond his or her personal jurisdiction. Again,
the speaker considers the addressee (the custodian of the
ntam) to belong to a higher social class. Finally, the
addressee is a person who wields greater power in the community than
does the speaker. By using the apologetic disclaimer
,
the speaker makes it difficult for the chief to say no to the
oath-swearing.
The verb
can also be considered in terms of
requesting. Requests are pre-event acts that are meant to
prepare the way for the performance of upcoming events in favor of
either the speaker or the addressee. In using
‘request/beg’, the speaker is claiming clearance to
swear a reminiscential oath taboo, but the clearance is sought through
the ntam itself, which has now been personified. However, the
implication is that the permission is sought through the king who is
the custodian of the ntam.
In ethnolinguistic terms,
‘I request, apologize’ may be considered as an apologetic device.
It is also a means of showing politeness, humility, submissiveness, and
knowledge of the Akan language. The use of the apologetic device
is influenced by the social context of the oath
– the fact that it is spoken in the presence of a revered entity,
in effect the king. The speaker is appealing to the stool of the land
via the king (the stool is the implicit target of the whole context).
This is in line with the circuitous mode of communication at court,
where the speaker addresses the king through the Okyeame (spokesperson)
(see Yankah 1995). There is, therefore, a
need to exaggerate politeness by use of the performative
.
The format is conventional, except that ntam performance
does not call for indirection. In ntam speech events,
directness connotes sincerity and straightforwardness, and this is what
we see with the apodictic and commissive propositions. Oaths are
required to be precise in order to avoid ambiguity that may give room
for dubious interpretation at a later time when the speaker is called
upon. The equation of indirectness with greater politeness has been
criticized as being simplistic; it may depend on factors of genre and
specific cultures. The use of indirection to obviate crises, to
communicate difficulty, and to make utterances consistent with face and
politeness (see Obeng 1994:42) does not apply
wholly to ntam speech acts and events. In ntam, the
protactic that mentions the ntam can be considered as a form
of indirection because what is mentioned is a cover term, more or less
a euphemism, for the actual event referenced.
Style of ntam
In terms of style in ntam (especially the major ones), the
Akans adhere as much as possible to brevity. When an ntam is
used, the language should be as precise, straightforward, and devoid of
ambiguity as possible.
Circumlocution and unnecessary repetition of the same ntam
are considered jocular and inappropriate to ntam, which is a
serious taboo expression. Such uses are likely to be punished to
discourage the trivialization of the ntam taboo. At the trial
of a case at Manhyia on 30 May 1994, the Ankobeahene (a wing chief, or
subchief) who trivialized the major Asante ntam by using it
five times in a single ntam activity was severely punished.
This use of ntam shocked and embarrassed the chiefs at that
gathering. The culprit was strongly reprimanded, and his stool was set
aside until further notice, an act signifying suspension. This episode
underscores the importance and sacred uses of the ntam among
the Akans. The elders, therefore, say that the use of a single
ntam taboo in a single discourse has the potential of widening
its scope to cover all events therein.
In discussing language and politics and indirectness in political
discourse, Obeng 1997 mentions evasion,
circumlocution, innuendo, metaphor, proverbs, and idioms as the common
strategies that politicians use. He states that, owing to the rather
tricky and risky nature of politics itself, and especially because of
the power of the spoken word, political actors sometimes communicate in
an obscure, semantically dense, vague, oblique, rather cautious
manner.
Yankah 1995 talks about the Okyeame as a
speech intermediary, and sees therefore that messages to the chief and
from the chief to the subjects should officially be channeled through
the Okyeame. In such instances, the Okyeame is the
“animator” and has to edit the messages by embellishing
them with vivid words and figures of speech.
The two systems of speech cited by Obeng
1997 and Yankah 1995 run contrary to
ntam, which must be presented without circumlocution and forms
of indirection. The ntam is, however, comparable to
Yankah's proverb staff (a wooden staff ornamented with an emblem
representing a popular Akan proverb) because it is a sort of condensed
formulaic statement that alludes to the authority of ancestral dicta.
The ntam is a metonymic representation of what really
happened, an event too unpleasant to be recounted. Ntam is
also related to the discourse of shame and blame discussed by Obeng
(1997:79; 1999:729).
TYPES OF MAJOR NTAM ACCORDING TO
APPROPRIATE SITUATION: NTAMPA
This section looks at ntam in terms of setting,
participants, ends, acts sequence, and genre (see Hymes 1972): situations in terms of place and time,
participants, and the areas within which ntam may be used. The
functions of the ntam are also discussed. I give samples of
major ntam according to the various “formal
oath-taking” situations where they are permitted without any
penalties – that is, where they are ntampa
‘appropriate ntam’. These include the
following:
(i) Oath during preparations for war.
(ii) Oath of allegiance.
(iii) Judicial oath
(a) after the settlement of a case as a seal to the court's
verdict;
(b) before a witness testifies in a case of arbitration at the
chief's palace.
(iv) Ntam used as a minatory device.
‘war reminiscential oath’
During times of war, in view of the seriousness of the situation, it
is allowed to use the forbidden word in making a promise. This comes
under commissives. An example of war oath normally taken before the
chief by the Asafohene, the commander-in-chief of the traditional army,
is as follows:
7 This is
the major reminiscential oath of the Dwaben state of Asante; it is a state
.
It originated when the Dwabens waged
war against the Akyems, meeting stiff opposition that made them call
for assistance from the Dwabenhene's (king's) traditional
brother, the Asantehene. The Asantehene dispatched one of his wing
leaders, the Adontenhene, with an army to assist Dwaben. The
Dwabenhene, the Asantehene's Adontenhene, and thousands of Dwabens
were killed in the war. As the few surviving Dwabens were returning
home, many of them died of starvation. After a number of days, they
fortunately came upon a banana plantation that had only kwadu
bunu ‘unripe bananas’, for which they had to scramble.
The word twum (or twom) in the ntam refers
to the act of scrambling. The Kwadu Twum ntam of Dwaben is,
therefore, a reminder of the famine during the Dwaben-Akyem war (see
Obeng 1988:60).
After the swearing of such an oath of war, it was a taboo to sleep
again in the town where it was taken. The chief and his army were bound
by their words, and they moved directly into the war encampment
.
Immunity from all the usual consequences of
swearing an oath was permitted during the actual campaign. According to
my informants, anyone might use these oaths “freely and even
frivolously” without incurring any legal penalty whatsoever.
There are expressions like
‘When we go to war, we prohibit investigation of
any case arising out of the swearing of an oath’ (i.e., ‘We
have relaxed all matters related to oaths’); or
‘We have opened the oath coffers of
the king of Asante.’ The maxims of ntam discussed
earlier imply that people can now use the oath freely. This is a
situation in which the unspeakable becomes speakable.
Oath of allegiance
Oaths of allegiance can be of various types according to the
situation, including those taken by lesser chiefs on the death of a
superior chief, by a new chief during his installation before a king,
by a king before his subjects, and by a priest before a new chief.
On the death of a king, the other ahemfo
‘subchiefs’, ahenemmahene ‘chief of the
princes’, and the
‘chief priest’ of the state swear the
mu ntam while holding the state sword to pay their last homage to
their lord. I present here such an oath by a Kurontihene of an Akan state on
the death of a paramount chief
8 The
Kurontihene is next in command after the chief in the administration of
a town. When the chief travels, or when he dies and a new chief is not
yet installed, the Kurontihene takes over the administration, together
with other subchiefs.
:
9 Gyaase, Ankobea,
,
Domakwaa, Nifa, and Kyidom are various wings of the political administration
of the Akan state and have different functions in time of
war.
As the ahemfo ‘subchiefs’, ahenemmahene
‘chief of the princes’, and the
mfo panin ‘chief priest’ speak the taboo words in poetic
form, they direct the state sword toward the corpse lying in state. The
taboo words in (11), spoken by the subchief, include Meka
Wukuada meka Sokodei, Meka
Kwanyako meka
Meto Akwamu Yawoada. These taboo words can be used
in this context without any sanctions. If they are used in any other
context, they would be punishable – for example, if one said to
his wife:
The ntam Wukuada ne Sokodei belongs to the Akuapem
state of the Akans. It originated from a war the Akuapems fought with
the Ewes in a town called Sokodei, where the Akuapems were defeated on
a Wednesday. It has therefore become a sorrowful experience in the
lives of the entire Akuapem state, and for that reason nobody is
allowed to mention it lest he reminds the elders of that event.
The ntam sworn by the Kurontihene in (11), unlike the others
we have seen, seems very long and poetic. It is a combination of
various ntam brought together in a single utterance. The
swearer has been motivated to mention all these various ntam
taboos to prove how loyal he is to the dead king. He asserts that he
has no control over death, and so could not save his master. It has an
emotive effect on the audience. The evocation of ntam in an
oath of allegiance like this is allowed because it foregrounds the
seriousness of the event. However, in certain other contexts,
repetition of a ntam is punishable.
Nsuae ntam, the oath of allegiance to a king, can vary from
situation to situation and from participant to participant. It can be
given by a traditional priest before a new chief, or a newly installed
chief before a king, or a king before his subjects. During this period,
the speaker is given the license to speak the ntam taboo and
to commit himself or herself to the sincerity condition for speech acts
(see Austin 1962:40).
On the installation of a new chief or king, the traditional priest of
the state, who controls the spiritual power of the people, swears an
oath of allegiance to the king, who is the custodian of the state
‘deity’. He may swear as follows:
The Kokofu Fiada ne Dwoada, the major reminiscential oaths of the
Kokofu state of Asante, are said to have originated from the following
events. In the first place, the tribute of firewood demanded by the
Denkyiras when the Asantes served under them used to be collected on
Fridays and Mondays.10
Denkyira was one
of the strongest Akan states. The Denkyiras conquered the Asantes and
ruled them for a long period until the battle of Feyiase
(1698–1699), where the Asantes defeated them (see Braffi 1984). During their rule, every year the
Asantes paid tribute which included the best wives of the paramount
kings, firewood, red clay, drinks, and even plantain fiber to be used
as toilet tissue.
This was a real burden on the people. In
addition, many threatening and unfortunate events in the lives of the
Kokofu people happened on these days. In the war against the Bandas,
one of the royals of Kokofu was killed on a Monday. Pinaman Panin, a
queen, also died on a Monday. Gyaami, one of the most powerful kings of
the state, died on a Friday; Agyeman Ampuromfi, a king, fell sick on a
Friday and died on a Monday (cf.
Rattray
1969b). As a result of all these events, it was assumed that
these particular Fridays and Mondays were unlucky days for the people,
and for these reasons, events associated with them should not be
mentioned to remind the state of its calamities. This is the basis of
establishing these expressions as a
ntam and a verbal
taboo.
Let us look at the following oath, sworn by a chief before a king:
In (14), the letters (a), (b), and (c) represent the inherent
structure of the entire taboo utterance. A new chief from Bantama, a
suburb of Kumasi, is being installed, and he is swearing the oath of
allegiance to his superior king, the Asantehene. He uses two kinds of
ntam, the minor and the major oaths. This same structure can
also be found in various ntam situations such as swearing
before the mortal remains of a king, a traditional priest's oath
of allegiance, or a war oath. In an oath of allegiance, the
ntam reminiscential oath taboo expression can be used to mark
the social identity, origin, and power of people in Akan society.
Judicial Ntam used in arbitration
Ntam is one of the major mechanisms used in Akan local
arbitration to assert the truth and to avoid further conflicts. When a
case is settled at the level of the traditional court, witnesses who
testify are obligatorily made to swear the local oath. The intention is
that the swearer be committed to speak the truth; otherwise, he or she
violates the ntam. It is the normal ntam we have seen
previously that is used; the only change, a slight one, is the
apodictic propositional content. It is interesting to note that, in the
Asante state, the Asantehemmaa ‘queen’ has her own
ntam. This ntam is the one by which litigants or
witnesses at her court swear:
The
is said to have originated from
a sore that afflicted the toe of Asantehemmaa Nana Konadu Yiadom, queen
of Asante, and became so chronic that it eventually killed her.
11 Asantehemmaa Nana Konadu Yiadom was the
queen mother during the reign of the Asantehene Nana Osei Kwadwo
(1752–1781). According to my informant, Bosie-Amponsah of LUV FM
Kumasi, prior to Nana Konadu Yiadom's suffering this chronic sore
on the toe, no Akan women, including the queen mother, were allowed to
wear sandals; but just after her death, queen mothers were allowed this
(see also Braffi 1984:61–64). Now, all
women are allowed to wear sandals.
In the Akan tradition, after a case has been settled amicably either
at the household level or at the chief's or queen's court,
the ntam is used as a seal to mark the end of that case
officially. Each of the two parties is made to swear a ntam
oath to confirm that the case has been settled and that anyone who
brings back the case violates the ntam. The expressive term
used as the seal is taame, literally ‘we are mentioning
the hatred expression’. If the case is settled at the domestic
level, an ntankumaa is sworn. If it is a case tried at the
public level by the king or queen, a major reminiscential oath is
sworn. Below is an example:
According to Busia (1968:76), the Wenchi
Yawoada might have originated from the following account. During the
reign of Anye Amoapon, the Asantehene fought against the Dormaa in
about 1746. The people of Wenchi then lived at Ahwene. The advance
guard of the Asantehene's army took the wrong path and attacked
Wenchi by mistake. Many of the unprepared people were killed before the
error was discovered. The treasures of the Wenchi stool were hurriedly
hidden in the bed of the River Tain. The tragic incident occurred on a
Thursday. People should not be reminded of this incident, and it is
hence a reminiscential oath taboo.
Ntam used as a minatory device
Apart from the major situations discussed above, ntam can be
used also in various situations as a minatory, or threatening, device.
The verb ‘to threaten’ is one of the commissives verbs (see
Duranti 1997:224). Busia (1968:77–78) lists, among others, the
following; I will only discuss here an example of a minatory
ntam. The minatory type of ntam comprises two
categories: (i) ntam used by the custodian of the
ntam, a chief or king; and (ii) ntam used by a person
other than the owner.
Ntam may be used as a minatory device by the chief who is
the custodian of the ntam for the good of the entire society.
A chief may swear an oath for various purposes: to enjoin his men to
observe a certain custom; to order all those present to assist in
quenching a fire; to order the cleaning of the path to the village
stream; to order all his men to search for or apprehend a murderer; to
ask his men to rescue the dead or dying from a fallen house or tree; or
to enforce accepted rules of conduct, such as restraining young women
from loose sexual habits and immorality or young men from riotous
living. All these kinds of ntam commit the speaker to see to
it that what is being directed is done. The speaker uses the
ntam as a directive speech act to ask, order, command, enjoin,
enforce, restrain, or prevent the addressee's action. Such
ntam activities are thus a combination of commissive and
directive speech acts. They bind and commit the addressee to the
directive enshrined in the speaker's ntam.
An Akan citizen other than the chief may also use ntam as a
minatory device in various situations. A war captain swears an oath
when ordering his men not to retreat from an enemy. A man may swear an
oath to retrieve his lost property from another; to restrain others
from stealing crops from his farm; or to prevent another from doing him
bodily harm. On the dissolution of a marriage, a divorced husband may
swear an oath restraining his divorced wife from associating with a
paramour suspected to have been instrumental in disrupting the
marriage.
Oath-swearing by the chief is not sanctionable, and even though that
by a war captain is performed by a person other than an owner of
ntam, it is still non-sanctionable – as mentioned
earlier, during wartime, ntam may be used freely without
sanctions. A captain, like the chief, can use it for the good of the
people. All the other uses by non-custodial persons mentioned above may
attract sanctions if done inappropriately. The speaker is not the owner
of ntam and cannot use it trivially for private ends without
permission.
The speaker of a ntam may use it as a threat against his
target (i.e., a commissive). In the old days, a chief could speak a
ntam to some citizens to the effect that if they did not abide
by his policies, he would make sure that their whole generation was
killed:
The origin of the Kwasiada and Mpete ntam emanated from an
epidemic of smallpox that hit the whole town of Bekwai on one
particular Sunday and took thousands of lives. Hence, it has become a
taboo for people to speak about this tragic event. Families who have
been told about how the epidemic devastated their entire family will
not like to think of this disease and that Sunday.
The above ntam is used as a minatory device. The speaker
instills fear in the addressee in respect of an impending danger or
consequences. It can also be a warning (a directive) to dissuade one
from an act. Ntam in Akan can thus be used both as a
promissory oath, or commissive (in the case of allegiance, war, and
arbitration), and as a threat, or directive, as in (17) above.
CONCLUSION
We have seen ntam as a peculiar type of verbal taboo. Its
taboo nature stems from how the people themselves conceptualize it and
attach importance to it. The origin of ntam normally relates
to certain historical calamities or misfortunes that befell an
individual, a family, a community or the state, and of which the
people, both dead and alive, will not like to be reminded. I have
demonstrated that ntam can best be analyzed under the speech
act theory of commissives. Every ntam, by default, includes
the commissive verb ka ‘swear’. The apodictic
proposition may also be commissive or a directive, according to the
intention of the speaker and what she or he wants the addressee to
do.
Ntam, like other oaths, elevates the force of the basic
commissive structure from the individual to a statutory or
institutional level by widening the social field in which the
commissive is guaranteed. By allusion to a forbidden event,
ntam functions in the reproduction of social memory. But, even
more important, ntam by this allusion evokes or indexes the
presence of a community of those who know of the event and recognize
its importance, and whose face might be threatened by one's
mentioning it. Thus, the utterance of ntam creates a
community, a complicit audience, involved in guaranteeing the carrying
out of the commitment or in censuring failure to do so.
We identified two basic types of ntam based on their scope
of operation: ntankumaa ‘minor reminiscential
oath’ and
‘major reminiscential
oath’. While the former relates to an individual, a family, or a
small village or town, the latter is state-owned and the custodian is
the king or chief who has power and jurisdiction over the whole state.
We distinguished between ntanhunu ‘inappropriate’
and ntampa ‘appropriate’ based on the proper use
of ntam.
In terms of the structure, ntam has three main parts: (i)
the protactic proposition, involving the commissive performative verb
ka ‘swear’ that triggers the evocation of the
ntam taboo, (ii) the apodictic proposition that states the
reasons behind the protactic proposition (and may entail a commissive
or a directive), and (iii) the commissive that binds and
commits the speaker and further indicates the consequences of breach of
the ntam and the subsequent punishment. The protactic,
commissive performative verb ka ‘swear’,
interpretive
,
and the apodictic are obligatory in all
ntam expressions. The commissive punishment, which strengthens
the binding force of the ntam is, however, left out in some
ntam expressions, but implicitly it is there as a tool to
check the inappropriate use and perjury of the ntam.
Unlike the other verbal taboos in Akan and other societies,
ntam is politically and judicially based. If somebody violates
a state ntam, this is prosecuted like any other criminal case
against the state.12
The Hutchinson
Concise Encyclopedia (1995:245) defines criminal law as the
“body of law that defines the public wrongs (crimes) that are
punishable by the state and establishes methods of prosecution and
punishment. It is distinct from civil law, which deals with legal
relationships between individuals (including organizations) such as
contract law.” In our study, therefore, we consider a
ntam offense as a crime against the Akan state.
It is
a case between the individual and the state, but not between the
speaker and the addressee as evidenced in other types of Akan verbal
taboos. A violator of
ntam can face various penalties, which
may range from payment of fines or drinks, through an offering of
sheep, to death.
We saw that ntam is a multifunctional concept and might be
used in many different situations: land and stool disputes, marital
issues, oath of allegiance, oath for war, oath before the corpse of a
king, claim of ownership, justification and sincerity in certain
issues, a seal to the settlement of case at the arbitration, and so on.
Although in some of these cases the swearer would be punished for using
the ntam inappropriately, in others no sanctions are incurred
for use in certain identifiable appropriate social contexts.
Ntam plays an important role at the traditional politic and
governance. Unfortunately, it has no place at the modern state and
Ghana national politic. Ntam is restricted to traditional
contexts. It is used in local jurisprudence, where it is employed
across the board, from local settings such as family arbitration to
wider traditional public settings such as arbitration at the
Asantehene's court. There are differences between the
ntam usages in these two divergent settings. The custodian of
each of the ntam is the head of the group. The sanctions and
penalties imposed on a violator also differ in accordance with the
power of the custodian.
Ntam is one significant political, historical,
sociocultural, and judicial institutions that has withstood the test of
time, irrespective of modernization, westernization, and foreign
religion. The functions and the importance of ntam discussed
in this article emphasize it as an indispensable sociolinguistic,
pragmatic, and ethnographic concept that will continue to thrive in the
soil of the Akan community forever.
