Conversational analysis of Emeka Nwabueze’s When the Arrow Rebounds

Abstract

This study analyses Emeka Nwabueze’s When the Arrow Rebounds from the perspective of conversational analysis. All the dialogues in the play form the basis of the analysis which examined the social background that informed the dialogues and how these dialogues negotiated meaning. It is observed that conversational strategies such as turn-taking, implicature, shared knowledge, speech act, context, inference, presupposition, etc. are used to reach a specific kind of insight into the ways people interact. It also describes the competence that speakers use and rely on in participating in socially organised interaction. It is also observed that language, beyond its formal properties, has more to do with different social contexts, organisation and the process of encoding and decoding meaning in conversation. Furthermore, the analysis discovered certain norms of conversation that were violated while some others were adhered to and used in meaning negotiation.

Keywords: Effectiveness, Conversation, conversation analysis, meaning negotiation, discourse.

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