Language and Style in Political Inaugurals: A Study of Inaugural Speeches of Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State, Nigeria (Published)
Scholarly works abound on political speeches but very few are on political inaugurals in spite of its distinctive stylistic features and communicative import. This paper adopts a combination of stylistics and Michael Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar as approaches to examine the patterns of language use in the inaugural speeches of Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State with the view to uncovering the specific stylistic choices that characterise the speeches and their pragmatic import. The speeches are characterised by lexical items (adjectives, adverbs, pronouns) which the speaker creatively deploys to promote his political programmes, and to present himself as a committed, sincere and responsible leader. There is a preponderance of declarative sentences and declarative mood which Mimiko engages in promising, assuring and stating to persuade and mobilise listeners. Topicalisation and graphology; testimonial argument and promising; and rhetorical forms are creatively organised to convey pragmatic information such as humility, respect, unity, responsibility and commitment.
Keywords: Communicative Intentions, Inaugural Speeches, Mood, Political Discourse, Stylistics
Stylistic Structuring: Syntactic Patterns of Advertising Slogans in Bamenda Urban Council of the North West Region of Cameroon (Published)
A slogan is a short, catchy and memorable phrase designed to capture the importance of a product. It portrays the brand’s identity, creates a sense of likability in the brand name and is used to convey a message about the service of the product it represents. The article was designed to investigate the structural patterns of clauses and groups used in slogans collected from billboards, bar walls and doorposts, put up by different business establishments in Bamenda, in the North West Region of Cameroon. The study is based on the Rank Scale systematic approach of Halliday. The results reveal that there are different kinds of structures such as, the declarative, imperative, nonfinite verbal clause, parallel structure, nominal group, prepositional group and adverb group used in the slogans, and these structures, in the different ways they function, all act in persuading the consumer to buy their products.
Keywords: Bamenda, Clause, Group, Patterns, Slogan, Stylistics
Stylistic Notes on ‘Banat Suad’: The Passive Participle and Verb (Published)
This research paper investigates Kaab Bin Zuhair’s poem ‘Banat Suad’, also known as Al-Burdah, highlighting the stylistic notes, especially the passive participle and verb, which can be regarded as an important model of research examination. The repetition of these two stylistic notes seems to be a characteristic of his poem, wherein the previous stylistic notes were observed on the linguistic forms of the verses used throughout. As far as the semantic structure is concerned, it was found that the passive participle and verb are much more associated with objects than subjects in the utterances used , an indicator of the emotive and psychological state controlling the poet who was threatened to be killed while the composition of the text.
Keywords: Linguistic Forms, Stylistics, passive participle, passive verb
Investigating Feminist Tendency in Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” In Terms of Sara Mills’ Model. A Feminist Stylistic Study (Published)
This paper purports to explore the relationship between linguistic structures and socially construed meanings in a narrative text. A stylistic analysis is conducted to unravel the design agilities of Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”. It tries to investigate her stylistic traits whereby much of the time her words seem to cloak or obscure what really happened. By adopting Sara Mill’s Model, the researcher attempts to reveal the ideology and power relations that underpin a literary text from different levels (according to the model) word, phrase, and discourse. The evidence seems to be strong that the model, however, has identifiable functions which contribute to the effective meaning of the novel. On this basis, it may be inferred that these elements trigger and play significant roles in passing the intention of the writer across.
Keywords: Feminism, Focalization, Fragmentation, Ideology, Stylistic Analysis, Stylistics