La littérature orale traditionnelle, un instrument d’éducation? L’exemple des Dioula de Kong (un groupe manding de Côte-d’Ivoire)

Abstract

The Fula, “horoya” among the Manding, “burkina” among the Mosse etc.), goes beyond the sapiential genres proposing behavioural standards aimed at the training of accomplished individuals: proverbs, initiatory genres, ceremonial songs… Starting from the specific case of the Dioula oral heritage as a comprehensive entity, local speech categories and their social exchange (who can or must express what genres, who can or must listen to them?) will be examined as structural systems. The results of such an enquiry demonstrates that official and subversive genres go side by side, and a real “wisdom path” (parcours de sagesse) is offered to individuals throughout their life. This wisdom path runs from the “pleasure principle”, expressed in cathartic and more or less subversive genres belonging to young people, to the “reality principle”, seen as acquisition of gained maturity, with genres that only mature people may possess. Dioula oral literature offers not only standards of wisdom (standards that, by the way, change with the evolution of customs) but also a “wisdom route” that unveils itself in the very structure of its field. itiatory function of language of Bernard Zadi Zaourou.