A Pragmatic Analysis of Selected Conversations in Keye Abiona's Even Kins Are Guilty and Ahmed Yerima's Hendu

The study examines a pragmatic analysis of selected conversations in Keye Abiona's Even Kins are Guilty and Ahmed Yerima's Hendu. This study has dealt with the critical analysis of socio-pragmatic features in Keye Abiona's Even Kins are Guilty and Ahmed Yerima's Hendu, In the course of the analysis, the socio-pragmatic elements of ethnography of communication (S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G) as well as Searle's Speech Act theory and specific features of deictic elements were examined in both texts. The instrument used in the utterance is the oral form and speech act analysis in Keye Abiona's, Even Kins are Guilty.Findings reveals that the acts of reporting, describing, revealing, responding and reporting are the recurrent micro illocutionary acts in the text. Also, the use of deixis in the texts.Keye Abiona's Even Kins are Guilty reflects the use of person deixis with 90.2% and place deixis with 9.8%. The identified deixis in the text to be person deixis with 77%, place deixis with 17% and time deixis with 6%. For person deixis, the pronouns 'you' and 'T' occur with the highest frequency of 28% and 25% respectively. The study concluded that, the play is set in a typical pristine Yoruba cosmology where total adherence and compliance to the norm of the Yoruba culture is paramount. The study further recommended that; this study has only delved into the aspect of sociolinguistics and pragmatics of Keye Abiona's Even Kins are Guilty and Ahmed Yerima's Hendu; the study is not exhaustive as far as literary idiolect is concerned; the future researchers should explore the syntactic and phonological aspects of the literary texts by the playwrights.