Exploring Mythic Narratology in Selected Indigenous Nigerian and Chinese Taboos for Social Control

Abstract

Aside the fact that myths constitute a vast majority of the content of the oral narrative genre, some mythical elements like totems and taboos also contain a high degree of the patronage of oral narratives. The analysis of mythic narratology in this presentation, an extraction from a larger research work, is partly influenced by William Labov’s concept of oral narratives (2001, 2004 and 2006) which among other issues see oral narratives as ‘a way of recounting the past events, establishment of temporal juncture between two or more referent events’ or an orientation that identifies participants in action, the time, place and behaviour. Some of the taboos selected in this presentation are attached to some animal and phenomena totems across some indigenous cultures in Nigeria and China for a comparative analysis. Against the background of Branislaw Malinowski’s (1927) view of “myth as charter”, espoused in Robert Redfield’s (1954) essay on properties and functions of myths which also received the attention of Isidore Okpewho’s (1983) model of myths. The paper relies on the ability of certain oral narratives in effectively conditioning people’s belief system and in creating and sustaining desired social control mechanism if properly channeled. It concludes that the Nigerian system should incorporate some of the indigenous creative aspects of their belief systems into the national outlook in order to ensure national cohesion.