Over the years, Kannywood, a Kano-based Hausa film industry, faces a lot of problems; one of which is its inability to attract experts’ attention to address (some of) the problems by critically critiquing its films through writing books and scholarly papers. This can be vindicated as Muhsin lbrahim – an expert who has been investing much time and intellect in Kannywood – beautifully noted in his latest book that only “a few, mostly foreign, academics have written about these issues” [and problems that Kannywood struggles with].”
However, an important fact about the problems Kannywood faces that appear promising is the fact that some vibrant academics, one of whom is the author of the academic paper this article critiques, make tireless efforts in examining some of the problems through writing.
The recently published academic paper (authored by a lecturer at Bayero University Kano by the name of Aliyu Yakubu Yusuf and titled “Taboo and Euphemism: A Socio-pragmatic Study of Vulgar Language in Hausa Films”) has beautifully examined the use of ethically offensive expressions in some Kannywood films, which are against values of a typical Hausa society.
The paper uses language with special consideration to “felicity” and “clarity” especially looking at how ideas are presented in a way that readers would read it with great “alacrity”. Also, stylistically foregrounded expressions – eg, emboldened and italicised items – have been presented appropriately, hence clarity of expression.
In addition, the content of the paper has aptly featured one of the major problems that has – only recently – hit the film industry: use of vulgar language, which conspicuously affects its popularity negatively among some of its ardent audience who, however, now ditch the industry’s films which appear to be offensively unacceptable to them. To say the least, this is a major setback as many aspirations are likely to get obstructed with respect to the industry’s popularity.
The data on which the paper is based was extracted and brilliantly discussed by identifying the “vulgar” expressions made in the films and providing “alternative euphemisms” which could have been supposedly used. Aside from that, the paper is even able to identify a raw unpalatable insult – something a typical Hausa value finds very unacceptable.
Furthermore, something of great significance that has been portrayed in the paper is the fact that readers are put into cognizance in the sense that they – even if they are not advanced learners – may not have too much difficulty grasping the paper’s content. In other words, the diction is neither cumbersome nor unnecessarily complex.
However, in the data presentation and discussion section, where the taboo expressions are written in Hausa; there are a few pardonable oversights of “word division” and “word merging”, which need only a little adjustment to get them free of those oversights. For instance, “…ciki ne dani” should have been written as “…ciki ne da ni”; “…kwanta akan gadonsa” should have been written as “…kwanta a kan gadonsa”; “Muje daki…” should have been written as “Mu je daki…” and a few more. Nevertheless, if I were to be assigned to rate the accuracy of the orthography of the written Hausa statements, I wouldn’t rate it below 75 out of 100 marks.
It is very imperative to draw the attention of all members of the Kannywood film industry – including all other Hausa film censoring agencies – to, as a matter of fact, look into the problems examined in the paper in order to restore the popularity the film industry lost to those problems and their kind. Considering the present realities of Kannywood, having such academic papers published is a huge achievement because if stakeholders carefully put it into cognizance, there would be a big impact on the acceptability and popularity of Kannywood films among average typical Hausa people.
Conclusively, It’s very vital to note that this is not in anyway an attempt to baselessly criticise the film industry. However, it’s just an effort to help make things right.
Sabiu writes from Bauchi
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Sky Daily
