Abstract
This paper explores proverbs as identity builders and socialization tools in Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God. It is grounded on the ideational metafunction in Systemic Functional Linguistics. Proverbs have been collected in the first two chapters of Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God with the contexts in which they occur. They are highlighted with italic characters in one table. The proverbs were analyzed from the perspective of processes, participants and circumstances and their frequency counts were established. The results and discussion show that through animal characters, proverbs are used to build identity and impart and social skills.

circumstance, experience, frequency, ideational, proverbs.