CONTEXTUAL IMPLICATIONS AND THE DYNAMICS OF CULTURE IN KUNLE AFOLAYAN’S OCTOBER 1

Abstract

The role of context in interaction transcends the traditional notion of the physical or immediate situation of the interaction and the epistemic or linguistic variables to include, in recent research approaches, contexts that are actively created during interaction which might have no direct bearing to existing knowledge brought into the talk situation. A contributory factor to this is the fact that meaning is both socially constructed and constrained, as well as context dependent. Consequently, studies have gravitated towards the import of the entire gestalt of contexts’ contribution to meaning construction and comprehension. This article thus examines the implications of context and the consequence of culture in the movie October 1. Kecskes (2008) Dynamic Model of Meaning (DMM) and Clark’s (1996) aspects of common ground are adopted as the conceptual basis as they account for the construction and generation of meaning both at the levels of private contexts and the actual or situational context.  The study reveals that context in the movie is not only a function of the prior knowledge brought into the interactions, but is very much reliant on the emergent contexts which are created in the actual situational contexts. This consequently creates a distinction between the context of the movie (which is founded on the world knowledge held prior to the interactions in the movie) and context in the movie (which is actively created in the course of the movie). An analysis of the movie also shows that culture is an integral part of the communicative attempt in the movie. The kernel of the findings is that the lexical choices, shared knowledge and common ground which are exploited in highlighting the contextual implications in the movie are, ultimately, founded on the cultural orientation of the movie, which largely drives the events and consequences of same in the movie. The paper concluded that a consideration of context and the dynamics of culture serves as a lens through which script writers’ and cineastes’ attempts at creatively engaging language as a tool for conveying the socio-linguistic cum cultural intricacies in human interaction can be viewed.