Abstract

Culture, the shared values, beliefs, customs, traditions and practices of a people are a fertile ground for semiology which studies signs, meanings and their functionality. The Yoruba procreation-aiding incantation is replete with the deployment of signs and symbols that function to help realise the central desire of the text. Whereas previous studies on Yoruba incantations have shown very scant records of involving semiology, this study therefore, examined the cultural signs using semiology to evince the ideas communicated through Yoruba procreation-aiding incantations and how they functioned for effectiveness in the concerned texts. The selected Yoruba procreation-aiding incantations, gathered through ethnographic fieldwork, makes use of verbal codes and formulas that are believed to have magical potential because they are result oriented. These codes and formulas involve the use of the spoken word to reinforce the processes of conception, gestation and birth. Every one of these stages are represented in signs and symbols and are made to work for the purpose of reproduction based on the perception of the culture of the people. This study adopted the triadic semiotic model of C. S. Peirce which distinguishes among the iconic, indexical and symbolic signs. All of these were interpreted and harnessed to lend validity to Yoruba people’s mythology, imagination and science. This study concluded that, however the magical perception of the Yoruba procreation-aiding incantation, the effects that are ascribed to it are intricately bound by the characteristics of the signs that are found therein.

Key Words: Culture, Semiology, Yoruba, Procreation-Aiding, Incantations