Corruption-Induced Idioms and Idiomatic Expressions in Yorùbá Literary and Routine Communication: A Stylistic Approach (Published)
Corruption is a semantically multi-faceted expression construed as appropriation and dishonest means of the acts of embezzlement, fraud, falsification, perversion, bribery and nepotism designed to gain some benefits for self. Corruption has pervaded social and political circles in Nigeria and, has acquired certain new idiomatic expressions found in literary and routine communication of the Yorùbá. The paper adopted Mukarovsky’s theory of Standard Language mainly to explain the nature of the new idioms, to explicate the communicative and stylistic relevance of these idioms and to situate the social issues expressed through these idioms in Yorùbá discourse in selected literary works in Yorùbá. Linguistic metaphorisation strategy derived from nominalization, composition and phonaesthetic coinages was employed for data selection. Yorùbá idioms and idiomatic expressions were selected from routine communication from four literary texts written by Olúyẹ́misí Adébọ̀wálé, Abégúndé Adédoyin, Lérè Adéyemí and Dayọ̀ Àkànmú with sufficient examples of usages of new idioms. The data revealed new idiomatic usages such as egúnjẹ (bribe), gbájú ẹ̀ (defraud him), ojẹ̀lú (corrupt politician), yàúyàúù (Internet fraud), jẹun sápò (eat into the pocket), gẹ́ranmáwọ (cut meat with the skin), etùtù (appeasement), et cetra. Data Analysis therefore illustrates the issue of corruption expressed and contextualized in bribery, Internet fraud, politiking, looting and contract splitting. The aforementioned reflects the pervasive influence of corruption underpinning fraudulent ideology in the conversations of the characters in the texts examined. The uniqueness of these new idioms is how they are used to highlight new normal in the language use to show fraudulent practices and disorientation of the society.
Dayọ̀ Àkànmú and Francis Yẹdé (2022) Corruption-Induced Idioms and Idiomatic Expressions in Yorùbá Literary and Routine Communication: A Stylistic Approach, International Journal of English Language and Linguistics Research, Vol.10, No 4, pp.86-99
Keywords: Corruption, Literary, Stylistics, idioms Yoruba, routine
Pragma-Stylistic Manifestations in Sport Discourse from Selected Radio Stations in Ibadan Metropolis (Published)
Language is a complex human-specific system of communication. It is the only means by which people in a speech community communicate among themselves. Pragma-stylistic is one of the types of context-oriented stylistics that has to do with speech act stylistics. Its contributions to the field of stylistics have made the study of language an interesting one. The need to ascertain whether sport presenters on the radio employ speech acts in their conversation motivates this study. A pragma-stylistic model of literary analysis is presented and applied to analyse the sport discourse from selected radio stations in Ibadan metropolis. The conversations are analysed as a cohesive chunk so as to examine the direct and indirect illocutionary acts, the perlocutionary effects, the various contexts and competencies that are inherent in the sport discourse. The major results of the analyses indicate that the participants engage in conversation so as to do things with words.
Keywords: Language, Pragmatics, Stylistics, Utterance, pragma-stylistics
Understanding the Use of Deixis in Paul Biya’s 2019 Message to Cameroonian Youth (Published)
This paper aims to examine qualitatively and quantitatively the use of deixis in a political speech, guided by Halliday’s (1985/1994) Systemic Functional Grammar theory of language. The data examined here is a message delivered, on 10 February 2019, by the President of the Republic of Cameroon to the youth of his country, on the commemoration of the 53rd edition of the country’s National Youth Day. The message, in its English version, is retrieved from the official website of the Presidency of the Republic of Cameroon. Specifically, the study sets out to determine the different types of deictic resources used by Paul Biya in his message to the Cameroonian youth, and the frequencies of Paul Biya’s usage of these deictic resources in this political speech. The study reveals that Paul Biya employed different types of deictic resources including 103 personal deixis (52.2 %), 17 spatial deixis (9.4%), 21 temporal deixis (11.7%), 30 social deixis (16.7%), and 8 discourse deixis (10%). In terms of frequency of usage of these deictic resources, the study also revealed that personal deixis were the most used category of deixis in President Paul Biya’s message to the Cameroonian youth and suggested that this reflects the President’s power and dominance over his audience, but also his desire to involve this audience in his decisions, as a sign of his sensitivity towards them.
Keywords: Cameroonian youth, Deixis, Paul Biya., Stylistics, deictic resources, political speech