THE TONAL PATTERNS OF INVECTIVES IN UMUCHU DIALECT

Abstract

In the social act of doing things with words, speech acts, there is a kind of 
illocutionary force known as invective. This paper intends to subject the 
concept of invective in Umuchu dialect of the Igbo language to tonal 
pattern analysis within the theoretical spectrum of speech act theory and 
possibly explore the way the change of the pitch forms on syllables can be 
used to achieve semantic effects. The paper seeks to ascertain the fitting 
criterion for the classification of the invectives in the dialect. It also seeks 
to identify the regular sequence of the tones that characterize the 
invective. The researcher’s intuitive knowledge as the native speaker of 
the dialect is employed to good effect. The paper finds out that semantics 
is the suitable basis to classify the invectives. With that as the yardstick, 
the paper also establishes the many types that abound in the dialect. 
Among other things, the paper establishes the characteristic prominence 
of imperative constructions of the invective and also notes that the tone of
both low and high tone of the speech act verbs develop into a rising tone.