Published Article

ABSTRACT

Songs are so captivating. Its rich values are cherished by people. Songs are part of oral literature; its performance are desired when the lyrics are given a deep semantic attention. For this work of art to bring out its intended meaning in communication, some of it linguistic features have to be analysed. The aesthetic values of these songs are embedded in the choice of linguistic elements and deviations used by the song writers. It is on this note that this paper was carried out to explore the semantic deviations found in the Amaeke Item war songs. The work is anchored on ethnopoetic theoretical framework. To achieve the objectives of this study, a descriptive survey research design that uses random sampling techniques were used. The analysis of the linguistic features of the songs revealed a lot of foregrounding irregularities that occurred at the semantic level in order to achieve the desired meanings. From the analysis of the data, it was found out among other things that there are lots of semantic deviations in the songs. The most commonly used ones include the personification, metaphor, euphemism and synecdoche. It is recommended that research on our traditional songs should be encouraged in order to unveil and retain our historical values.