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Lexical and Discursive Construction of Identity in Selected Twenty-First Century Nigerian Novels
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Persuasive Strategies in the Language of Insurance Advertising in the Print Media in Nigeria
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SOCIOLINGUISTIC DIMENSIONS OF SPOUSAL COMMUNICATION IN BUCHI EMECHETA’S SECOND-CLASS CITIZEN AND AKACHI ADIMORAEZEIGBO’S THE LAST OF THE STRONG ONES
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Page will reload when a filter is selected or excluded.- Advertisement 1 results 1
- African Culture 1 results 1
- Available literature has applied different theories to the language of advertisement. It has examined it through stylistic, pragmatic and speech act theories but not from the perspective of interactional sociolinguistics. Therefore, this study applied John Gumperz‟s theory of interactional sociolinguistics to the language of Insurance advertising in newspapers and on billboards within the Nigerian linguistic and sociocultural context, with the aim of analysing the persuasive strategies employed in it. The theoretical framework for the study was an adaptation of Gumperz‟s theory of interactional sociolinguistics and Halliday‟s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), which was used to analyse the lexico-syntactic aspect of the work. This is because Gumperz‟s theory of interactional sociolinguistics has the ability to account for the linguistic and socio-cultural variables that are employed in a communicative event while Halliday‟s SFG gives comprehensive information about grammatical description. The data, consisting of 100 published insurance advertisements, were collected from three purposively selected Nigerian national newspapers – The Guardian, The Punch and Daily Champion covering 2001-2009, complemented with billboard advertisements from all the southwestern states of Nigeria. The newspapers were selected because they have national coverage and a high density of insurance advertisements from different insurance companies in Nigeria. Several pragmatic strategies were used in both newspaper and billboard insurance advertisements to encourage potential customers to patronise the insurance companies. They included reliance on shared social and cultural rules, allusion to shared history and values, reliance on shared knowledge and presuppositions about the world. Speech-style switching was used to get the reader interested and conversationally involved with the texts. The lexical choice of the advertisers contained a dominant use of skill-indicative adjectives which portrayed the insurance companies as experts in their field and were used to evoke confidence in their expertise. Examples are „unfailing‟, „exceptional‟ and „skilled‟. There was also the use of morality indicative nouns, such as „integrity‟ strategically utilised to persuade potential customers about the trustworthiness of the company, and the use of riskindicative nouns for instance „disaster‟ to show that insuring was mandatory. Actionprovoking verbs such as „get‟ and „come‟ were used to encourage the reader to respond and act on what they had read. The syntactic option of the advertisers displayed a copious use of the simple sentence through which they declared their virtues and the benefits of patronising them. Pictorial rhetoric was designed to make participation in insurance appealing to the reader. Rhetorical devices such as symbolism, metaphor, hyperbole and personification were used to enhance their persuasive presentation. Creative and manipulative use of capital letters and typefaces of different sizes emphasised different aspects of the message. Insurance advertisers draw on linguistic, social, cultural, pictorial and aesthetic resources to build a strong persuasive discourse. The language of insurance advertisement revealed that insurance advertisers considered these media a powerful means of renewing the almost lost interest of the average Nigerian in participation in insurance 1 results 1
- Construction of identity constitutes a major means by which novelists, dramatists and poets deal with the interface between themes and social realities in their writings. Given the centrality of this engagement to literary discourse, elaborate attention has been given to identity construction in most literary genres, especially, poetry, drama and autobiographies. However, inadequate attempt has been made to explore the role of contextualized vocabulary choices in identity discourse in the novel, which contains clearer and more elaborate testimonies of identity construction than other literary genres. This study, therefore, investigates lexical and discursive construction of identity in selected twenty-first century Nigerian novels in terms of forms and lexico-discursive features. This is with a view to determining how identity is indexicated in the novels. The study adopted aspects of Ruth Wodak‘s discourse-historical analysis, together with lexical semantics and Manuel Castells‘ identity theory. Four Nigerian novels were purposively sampled: two Nigeria-based authors: Abimbola Adelakun‘s Under the Brown Rusted Roofs [RR] and Vincent Egbuson‘s Love My Planet [LP]; and two foreign-based authors: Helon Habila‘s Waiting for an Angel [WA] and Okey Ndibe‘s Arrows of Rain [AR]. Habila‘s and Egbuson‘s award-winning novels were sampled over their other novels, while Adelakun‘s and Ndibe‘s only novels were respectively selected. The texts were selected because they manifest issues relating to identity construction. The language of the novels was subjected to lexical and discursive analyses. Four forms of identities – national, ethnic, social, and religious – manifested in the novels. National identity bifurcates into cultural sameness and uniqueness – lexicalized through borrowing and innovations and politics, characterised by indigenous abbreviations. Ethnic identity, indexed through borrowing and naming, is laden with conflictual and antagonistic moves, indicating resistance to the outgroup. Three types of social identities are negotiated: professional, ingroup and outgroup. Professional identity is lexicalised through borrowing from Spanish, Latin and French, and Nigerian Pidgin; ingroup identity indexicated by emotive slangy expressions; and outgroups by naming and euphemisms that are replete with disaffiliating strategies. Three forms of religious identities, constructed through religious expressions, manifested: legitimising, resistance and powerlessness. Legitimising and resistance identities are respectively characterised by domineering and resistant discourse moves and powerlessness by attitudinal indexes, effusive and affiliating mappings. Sexual identity, constructed through naming, slangy and euphemistic expressions, are contested on the discursive strategies of inclusion and exclusion marked by tagging, subversive and aggressive moves. While the religious expressions in LP, AR and WA encode Christian identity, RR‘s exploration of Arabic expressions constructs Islamic identity. Although LP and WA borrow extensively across indigenous languages to legitimise national identity and ethnic identity construction, evident in elaborate adoption of Yoruba and Igbo expressions, there are no significant differences in their choices of lexicodiscursive features. Twenty-first century Nigerian novelists deploy lexico-discursive features in the construction of identity forms; beliefs, religion and education play significant roles in the construction of identity. These demonstrate an exquisite interplay of form and function elements in the construction of identity in the Nigerian novel 1 results 1
- Discursive features 1 results 1
- Ebola Disease 1 results 1
- Emecheta and Adimora-Ezeigbo‟s novels 1 results 1
- Identity forms 1 results 1
- Insurance 1 results 1
- Interactional sociolinguistics 1 results 1
- Lexical devices 1 results 1
- Linguistic and paralinguistic behaviour 1 results 1
- Persuasion 1 results 1
- Practs 1 results 1
- Pragma-Semiotics 1 results 1
- Pragmatics 1 results 1
- Pragmemes 1 results 1
- Semiotics 1 results 1
- Signs 1 results 1
- Speech acts 1 results 1
- Spousal communication 1 results 1
- Spousal communication, a feature of language, which unravels certain sociolinguistic characteristics of a husband and his wife, is a dominant feature of African novels by female writers. Previous studies on Emecheta and Adimora-Ezeigbo were theme-based, with little attention paid to spousal communication in their novels. This study investigated the dimensions of husband-wife linguistic and paralinguistic practices in two select novels of Emecheta and Adimora-Ezeigbo, with a view to identifying the influences of indigenous culture on spousal communication. Hymes‟ Ethnography of Communication, and Hudson-Weems‟ Womanism, which explores the relationship between social and cultural meanings, and the natural contributions of women to society, were adopted accordingly. Emecheta‟s Second-Class Citizen (SCC) and Adimora-Ezeigbo‟s The Last of the Strong Ones (LSO) were purposively sampled because of their thematic preoccupation with spousal communication. Data were subjected to sociolinguistic analysis. Spouses‟ linguistic and paralinguistic behaviour portray the influence of the African culture. Spousal communication takes place among seven couples: Francis and Adah in SCC; Obiatu and Ejimnaka, Omeozo and Onyeka, Okorie and Ngbeke, Iheme and Chibuka, Iwuchukwu and Chieme, and Aziagba and Okoroji in LSO. Among the dimensions of interaction common to the two novels are solidarity, dispute, respect, reconciliation, disregard, intimacy, family planning, identification, criticism and abusive remarks. While financial dispute appeared in SCC, it is not present in LSO. Both authors use personal pronouns to describe the solidarity between the spouses, and explore the use of first and second person singular to demonstrate how a husband influences his wife into submission. Expressions of affection in the use of possessive pronouns, such as, “my” in “my wife”, “my mother” and “oyoyo M” (my beauty) are used for reconciliation in both novels. While Ezeigbo uses Obiatu‟s “look of great affection” and Ejimnaka‟s “gaze without blinking” as part of paralinguistic features to demonstrate intimacy between the couples in LSO, Emecheta uses “disregard” as a conventional paralinguistic feature, which spouses use to deny, insult, question or challenge each other in SCC. Periphrasis, which is a non-hostile verbal communication, is used in the expression of family planning dispute in SCC. Gender roles are well defined for spouses in LSO. Emecheta employs respect to depict the social roles of a wife as a mother to both husband and children. The husbands assume an air of superiority and power, and create for their wives inferior status in SCC and LSO, thereby displaying the influence of patriarchal African culture. Aziagba‟s leading role in her relationship with Okoroji is an exception in LSO. The presence of Christianity, education and other forms of foreign culture reversed the roles assigned to spouses in SCC as reflected in Adah. Rhetorical devices, such as lexical borrowing, codemixing and code-switching permeate the novels to foreground the use of the English Language in an African society. Spousal communication portrays patriarchal domination and plays a significant role in showcasing salient aspects of African culture in Second-Class Citizen and The Last of the Strong Ones. There is the need to acknowledge African worldviews from which spouses draw their communicative practices. Keywords: Spousal communication, Emecheta and Adimora-Ezeigbo‟s novels, African Culture, Speech acts, Linguistic and paralinguistic behaviour. Word count: 498 1 results 1
- Strategies 1 results 1
- This study examines strategies and devices adopted in Igbo to mark plurality on lexical items at both word and phrasal levels. The study provides additional evidence, adequate description, and explanation, as well as a theoretical background to the phenomenon which hitherto was not provided by earlier studies. Data were collected through observation, oral interview, and from existing literature. Data were analysed based on the principles and operations of the Minimalist Program. The study finds that five basic strategies could be employed to mark plurality in Igbo. These include merging of singular nouns with plural words or morphemes, via reduplication, use of conjunctions, use plural sensitive verbs, and context of speech. Plural devices include nouns with an inherent PL feature such as ndi ‘persons’ and umu ‘offspring’; the third person plural pronoun, ha; quantifiers such as niile/dum ‘all’; numerals abuo ‘two’ and above; mass nouns, igwe/igwurube ‘group’; clitics ga and nu ; reduplicated nouns; conjunctions na ‘and’; and plural-sensitive verbs such as chita ‘bring’, and ju, ‘be’. The study concludes that Igbo belongs to the set of languages that syntactically mark plural by using independent morphemes/words; i.e. plural words. 1 results 1
- Twenty-first Century Nigerian novels 1 results 1
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