Activity Type and Pragmemic Conflict in Three Selected African Plays

Abstract

This study examines how conflict in African dramatic discourse is structured through context-bound pragmatic configurations. While African drama has been extensively analysed from thematic and sociopoltical perspectives, relatively limited attention has been paid to how conflict is organised as situated pragmatic action within recognisable activity types. Drawing on Mey’s Pragmatic Acts Theory, particularly the concepts of pragmeme and activity type, the study analyses selected dialogues from Ahmed Yerima’s Hard Ground, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The Black Hermit, and Akeem Ajibade’s The Thinking Head. Through qualitative textual analysis, the study identifies recurrent pragmemes that emerge within activity types such as political mobilisation, militant resistance, communal negotiation and generational contestation. The findings demonstrate that conflict is not merely a thematic construct but a contextually regulated interactional process shaped by sociocultural norms, participant roles and ideological positioning. The paper argues that activity type functions as a structuring mechanism that constrains and enables specific pragmemic realisations, thereby organising dramatic conflict as socially meaningful action. The study contributes to pragmatics and African literary studies by foregrounding activity type as a crucial analytical bridge between linguistic configuration and thematic construction in dramatic discourse.