The Pragmatics of Silence and Indirectness in Hausa Marital Communication: A Cross-Generational Study in Kano and Jigawa States

This study presents an investigation of silence and indirectness as pragmatic resources in marital communication among Hausa speakers in Kano and Jigawa States, North West Nigeria, developing an original theoretical framework for the analysis of communicative restraint in gender-structured intimate relationships. The pragmatics of marital communication in Hausa is governed by elaborate norms of indirectness and silence that reflect Islamic gender ideology, patriarchal authority structures, and longstanding Hausa communicative values, yet no formal pragmatic study has examined these phenomena in a cross-generational comparative design. The research employs an ethnographic pragmatics methodology drawing on interactional sociolinguistics and feminist pragmatics. Data were collected from 60 married couples across three age cohorts (20-35, 40-55, 60 and above) through naturalistic interaction recordings, elicited scenario responses, and individual retrospective interviews. The analysis develops a taxonomy of silence functions and indirect speech act strategies specific to Hausa marital discourse, examining both their frequency and their generational stability or change. Findings document an intergenerational shift in which younger couples in urban Kano show reduced reliance on formal silence and indirectness norms compared to older cohorts and Jigawa rural couples, a shift associated with educational level and Islamic reform movement influence. The study makes an original contribution to the pragmatics of intimacy in African languages and to the cross-cultural study of communication and gender. Keywords: silence, indirectness, Hausa, marital communication, Kano State.