Discursive Construction of Ideology in Print Media Political Interviews in Nigeria (Published)
This study examines the ideological orientations of discourse participants in selected print media political interviews (PMPIs) in Nigeria. Twenty political interviews were purposively selected from Vanguard and The Sun newspapers published between 2014 and 2016. The newspapers were selected because of their wide readership, accessibility, and coverage of political events. Privileging van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and transitivity system of Halliday’s systemic functional grammar (SFG), the study unearths four main ideological constructions to characterise the PMPIs: nationalist, supremacist, sectionalist and constitutionalist. These ideologies are realised through discursive strategies such as lexicalisation, polarisation, self-glorification and negative other-presentation, with material, mental, existential and verbal processes. The study concludes that a linguistic study of political interviews enhances the understanding of political leaders’ political ideologies which will ultimately help to ameliorate the problem of leadership and governance in Nigeria.
Keywords: Ideology, Nigeria, Print Media, Transitivity, political interviews, socio-cognitive model
A Stylo-Pragmatic Analysis of Selected English Gospel Songs in Nigeria (Published)
This paper explores the stylo-pragmatic properties of English gospel songs in Nigeria. This is an area where researchers have not really beamed their searchlights on despite wide-spread and general acceptability of Christian gospel songs in Nigeria. The aim of this study is, however, to utilise parodic strategies, as promoted by Morson (1989) and Bakhtin (1981), to explore some Christian lyrics in Nigeria. Three songs are purposively selected to reflect the linguistic multiplicity of Nigeria. They are: Pernam Percy Paul’s Bring Down Your Glory, Osinachi Joseph’s You Are Able and Dunsin Oyekan’s Open Up. The paper is able to show that Christian songs in Nigeria portray deeper meanings than what the lyrics present at the points of rendition. There are underlining parodies in which the alternate interpretation of a lyrics opens up deeper meaning that may probably suggest the intention of the song writer.
Keywords: Nigeria, Stylo-pragmatics, gospel songs, linguistic multiplicity, parodic strategies
An Error Analysis of a Nigerian Postgraduate Student in a United Kingdom University (Published)
This study presents an error analysis on an adult Nigerian postgraduate student in the United Kingdom. The results reveal that there are a lot of errors which associated with both Interlingua and intralingua. His second language development moves at lower rate. However, in some instances he has been using appropriate aspects of target language; that at certain points he realises inappropriate use of target language and makes self-correction. In terms of teaching implication, some errors can be corrected immediately while others can be delayed because too much negative feedback may hinder the progress of the learner. For example, the omission of /s/ sound can be ignored for immediate correction because it is often unnoticed, whereas errors associated with unmarked verb form can be corrected immediately.
Keywords: Error Analysis, Inter-language, Interlingua, Intralingua, Nigeria, Postgraduate Students, Second Language Acquisition