NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN NGWA-IGBO

Abstract

The word Ngwa refers to a group of the Igbo people that speak Ngwa as a dialect of the Igbo language and the geo-political area known as Ngwa Area. The Ngwa people are found in Abia State, Nigeria, in these seven Local Government Areas of: Isiala Ngwa North, Isiala Ngwa South, Obingwa, Osisioma, Aba North, Aba South, and Ugwunagbọ. Non-verbal communication is the type of communication that does not require the use of words. A major objective of this paper is to demonstrate that non-verbal communication as a part of the linguistic skill of the speakers of the Ngwa dialect of Igbo and to show that it is a modification of what should have been said by words. The primary source of data in this paper was gotten through the interview of two fluent native speakers of the Ngwa dialect aged 50-60 years. Also, use were made of the library texts and the internet. The framework on which this paper was carried out is the Language documentation framework. The choice for this framework is because it aims to gather and preserve long lasting corpora while a language is still being spoken, so that such information could be used for language or cultural preservation and revitalization. Some of the findings of this paper are: that non-verbal communication is a subtle mode of communication that intensifies an information, that non-verbal communication is an effective mode of communication in Ngwa- Igbo, that non-verbal communication can be used to convey information about an emotional state and that non-verbal communication provides an instant feedback about an information that is received.