BEYOND THE LEAF: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC PRAGMATIC STUDY OF AFRICAN MEDICINAL PLANT NAMING

Abstract

This work examines the intersection of language, culture, and ecological knowledge
in the naming of medicinal plants in four major Nigerian ethnolinguistic groups:
Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, and Fulani. With a set of 39 indigenous herb names, this study
demonstrates how naming practice carry encoded, functional, ecological, aesthetic,
and symbolic as well as spiritual information. Grounded in Relevance Theory and
principles in Ethnobotanical Linguistics, we explored how plant names function as
communicative acts within cultural settings. The data were analysed qualitatively
through thematic coding and quantitatively through a Chi-Square Test of
Independence. Symbolic and spiritual naming dominated the naming practices of the
Igbo and Yoruba speakers, functional descriptors were heavily favoured in Hausa
naming, and ecological contexts were markedly included in the Fulani naming.
Overall, these results demonstrate that plant nomenclature in African communities
serve not only as socio-historical and ecological markers, but also as epistemological
indicators that assist in the worldviews it embodies in framing reasons for spiritual
and environmental interactions. Further, the research supports the growing literature
on the potential benefits of indigenous knowledge systems and that language roots
serve as primary agents of ethnomedical knowledge transmission.