AWKA JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERARY STUDIES
The Awka Journal of English Language and Literary Studies (AJELLS) is a quarterly online (print on special request), peer-reviewed publication of the Department of English Language and Literature, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria. The journal is visible online, indexed by Google Scholar. The multidisciplinary focus of AJELLS enables it to draw contributors not only from language, literature, literary criticism, linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, stylistics, but also welcomes researches from allied disciplines such as gender studies, critical discourse analysis of media, political, medical, religious, ecological, and other discourses, psychoanalysis, philosophy of language and language therapy. Papers from Theatre and Film Studies, Modern European Languages, Igbo, African and Communication Studies and Chinese Studies are also welcome. In fact, the journal accepts language/literature-related researches in the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Law and other related areas of specialization.
Department of English Language and Literature, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, Nigeria.
Euphemistic Framing of Political Oppression in Chuma Nwokolo's The Extinction of Menai
This study investigates the linguistic mechanics of euphemistic framing as a deliberate strategy to mask political oppression and sustain structural hegemony in Chuma Nwokolo’s novel, The Extinction of Menai. While existing literatures explored euphemism through the benign lenses of linguistic politeness, facing-saving diplomacy, or general communicative evasion, a critical research gap persists regarding how euphemistic discourse is systematically operationalised as a primary instrument of authoritarian domination and elite manipulation, This article addresses this oversight by critically analysing purposively sampled extracts from the novel that evaluates state, military, and institutional power dynamics. Methodologically, the paper evaluates six textual extracts contextualise their broader socio-political resonance within the corporate-state complexities of the Nigerian polity. The theoretical framework integrates Micheal Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) - utilising the grammatical rank scale at the word, phrase, and clause complex levels to scrutinise transitivity processes and participant agency-with Marxist Literary Criticism to deconstruct class asymmetry and the subversion of state apparatuses. The analysis reveals that the text’s ruling elite systematically sanitise severe political oppression, resource exploitation, and dictatorial control by refracting them through a polished, and seemingly innocuous register of commerce, capitalism and globalised business networking. Fundamentally, this study demonstrates that modern political hegemony secures manufactured consent not merely though overt force, but by deploying specialised economic euphemisms that insulate the oppressors from moral accountability, obscure the human costs of structural violence and preserve elite dominance.
Cultural Constraints and the Denigration of Womanhood in Ikechukwu Asika’s Tamara
This study examines violence and harassment in Asika’s Tamara with particular attention to the denigration of women and constraints that shape their lived experiences. The novel presents a patriarchal society in which female characters are subjected to physical violence, emotional abuse, sexual exploitation, and systemic marginalization. Using Asika’s Tamara, this work explores numerous problems patriarchy poses on women and experiences of the marginalized women due to their gender. It therefore, exposes how cultural traditions, economic dependency, and rigid gender norms reinforce women’s vulnerability and silence their voices. Using feminism theory and qualitative context analysis, this work interrogates the structures of power that sustain harassment and normalize women’s degradation within the narrative. Thereby exposing the dual constraints faced by women: cultural norms that diminish them to mere objects of matrimony and procreation, alongside contemporary systems that persist in marginalizing them in education, economic prospects, and public dialogue. It argues that violence in the text is not merely individual misconduct but reflection of institutionalized patriarchy embedded in family, marriage, and community systems. The analysis further reveals how intra-gender tensions among women sometimes deepen oppression as female characters internalize patriarchal values and become agents of suppression against one another. The study concludes that Tamara functions as a social critique of gender injustice in contemporary Nigerian society. By highlighting Tamara’s quest for self-realization amidst cultural issues, this work calls for a reevaluation of gender rules, social transformation, gender equity, and the dismantling of oppressive traditions, and concludes that there is urgent need to challenge cultural practices that perpetuate harassment and constraint on women’s self-realization.
Lexical Cohesive Devices in Liwhu Betiang's Beneath the Rubble
Lexical cohesion constitutes an important mechanism through which textual continuity and meaning construction are achieved in discourse. This study investigates the deployment of lexical cohesive devices in Liwhu Betiang's Beneath the Rubble (2009), with a view to examining how antonymy, synonymy, and repetition contribute to textual cohesion and the construction of socio-cultural meanings. The research has become necessary as only a limited scholarly attention has been paid to the role of lexical cohesive devices in contemporary Nigerian fiction. The study is anchored on Halliday and Hasan's (1976) Theory of Cohesion within the broader framework of Halliday’s (1961) Systemic Functional Grammar. Fourteen purposively selected textual extracts from the novel were theoretically analysed. They comprise six instances of antonymy, five instances of synonymy, and three instances of repetition. Findings reveal that antonymy constitutes the most prominent lexical cohesive device in the selected corpus, followed by synonymy and repetition. The identified devices function as mechanisms of textual continuity as well as resources for representing gender experiences, social disparity, and communal conflict and reconciliation. The study concludes that lexical cohesion performs textual, thematic, stylistic, and ideological functions simultaneously in the novel. It further demonstrates that lexical cohesive devices contribute significantly to the organization of meaning and the representation of social realities in literary discourse. This study on the discourse analysis of lexical cohesive devices in the novel Beneath the Rubble by a Nigerian author, Liwhu Betiang, makes an invaluable contribution to discourse analysis and Nigerian literary studies.
Individuation in African Oral Epic: A Study of Sundiata
This study explores individuation in African epic literature, focusing on Sundiata Epic. Individuation, a concept developed by Carl Jung, refers to the integration of the unconscious and conscious aspects of the self, leading to the realization of one's true identity. The application of Carl Jung’s theory of individuation is much studied in literature and psychology of the West, but it is barely touched on in relation to African narratives. Through a critical analysis of Sundiata Epic, this study explore how the concept of individuation is portrayed in African epics with focus on the hero's journey of self-discovery , personal development, and integration within the community. The study is guided by the objectives of: analysing the depiction of individuation in the Sundiata Epic, analysing African concepts of individuation in relation to Western archetypal frameworks; and investigating the influence of oral tradition on the construction of African identity. This study aims to bridge a gap by analysing how African epics, Sundiata, reflect unique perspectives on individuation that emphasize the importance of communal support, ancestral guidance, and cultural heritage in shaping individual identity. The study findings indicate that African epics integrate psychological changes deepened by cultural, historical, and spiritual dimensions, thus expanding the concept of Jungian individuation.
Acquisition of Articulatory Competence among the Nigerian Users of English: A Study of Praat Speech Analysis
Articulatory competence is one aspect of language learning that non-native learners grapple with. This paper suggests how articulatory competence can be enhanced using praat speech analysis tool. Nigerians usually experience difficulty in articulating some English speech sounds or pronounce words that contain them. In this study, praat was used to teach 12 to 15 years old female students of Girls High School, Gindiri how to produce vowels /i:/, /I/, /ɒ/, /ᴧ/ and /ɜ:/. They were four each from northern, southern and western Nigeria. Formant frequencies of the sounds were retrieved from analysed utterances of native speakers extracted from Wells (2002) to serve as control. 20 participants produced 20 words containing the sounds, which were recorded and analysed using praat. The frequency values of formants one and two (F1, F2) of the participants’ and native speakers’ utterances were compared to establish the student’s articulatory competence. After learning the selected words using praat, the participants were able to pronounce them more appropriately. Although the pronunciations did not exactly match the control samples in all phonological aspects, they corresponded, to a large extent, in terms of F0 changes. The research is based on Laboratory phonology which is a phonological theory that ensures that empirical phonetic data are obtained and analysed through experimental methods. The research reveals the effectiveness of praat speech analysis tool in the acquisition of articulatory competence. It shows that Nigerians, as non-native learners of English, can develop the ability to pronounce English words that contain vowels not present in their native languages which will eventually improve communication among users of English in Nigeria.
Igbo Cosmology, Spirituality, and Cultural Continuity in Selected Nigerian Narratives
This paper examines how the Igbo cosmology has been presented in the works of Nigerian writers, and how this has helped in the reconciliation of the spiritual and physical worlds in the face of modernity. The texts selected are Chukwuemeka Ike’s The Bottled Leopard (1983), Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch (2011), and Achalugo Ezekobe’s Mmirinzo (2022), a combination of traditional and modernized texts to show how the Igbo spiritual axioms are developed and reclaimed in the 21st century. The analysis uses myth criticism and Afrocentricism as theoretical approaches with the focus on universal archetypes such as the wise elder and threshold guardians and focuses on African epistemologies. The methodology of a qualitative approach is closed reading of texts, finding themes and incorporating other secondary sources on Igbo beliefs. The findings show the role of ancestral spirits, dual identities, and rituals as the mechanisms to maintain the culture, criticizing colonialism and globalization. The study concludes that these writings reiterate the strength of Igbo cosmology as they propose decolonial readings that incorporate both tradition and modernity in seeking identity and balance.
Lexical Pragmatic Processes in Meaning Modulation: The Role of Context in Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s 2023 Presidential Campaign Rhetoric
This study examines the role of context in meaning modulation within Nigerian presidential campaign rhetoric, focusing on Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s pre- and post-election speeches. Using lexical pragmatic processes such as broadening, narrowing, metaphorical extension, and meaning transfer, the study analyses how Tinubu’s language adapts to different political contexts, influencing audience interpretation and political credibility. Drawing on relevance theory and cognitive pragmatics, the research explores how meaning shifts occur in response to rhetorical objectives, strategic ambiguity, and ideological positioning. The study also investigates linguistic inconsistencies in Tinubu’s speeches, assessing whether they reflect deliberate rhetorical strategies or cognitive/health-related limitations. Instances of redundancy, contradiction, and vague assertions are examined to determine whether they serve persuasive functions or indicate cognitive strain. Furthermore, the research evaluates the pragmatic consequences of meaning modulation, considering its impact on public perception, political trust, and campaign effectiveness. Data for this study consists of selected excerpts from Tinubu’s speeches, analyzed using qualitative discourse analysis. By situating these linguistic features within their socio-political context, the study contributes to the broader understanding of how Nigerian political figures employ language to navigate electoral campaigns and governance transitions. Findings suggest that meaning modulation in Tinubu’s rhetoric is shaped by both pragmatic strategies and contextual demands, with implications for political discourse, voter engagement, and leadership communication. The study underscores the need for a nuanced approach to interpreting political language, particularly in a highly contested and dynamic electoral environment like Nigeria.
Drama, Ideology and Social Praxis: Re-Evaluating the Socio-Political Function of Playwrights in Selected Plays
This study examines the connection of drama, ideology, and social praxis by evaluating the socio-political roles playwrights undertake in selected African plays. Sampling by Tewfik Al-Hakim’s Fate of a Cockroach, Femi Osofisan’s Aringindin and the Night Watchmen, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Micere Mugo’s The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, and Ola Rotimi’s Hopes of the Living Dead, the paper studies how plays function as ideological vehicles that reflect, assess, and restructure lived social realities. In the thematic concerns, characterization, and dramaturgical techniques, the paper explores how the playwrights capture the social realities of the African space. In the plays, oppression, corruption, class struggle, collective resistance, and the quest for liberation are given attention. Al-Hakim employs allegory to expose the incongruities of leadership in the society; Osofisan challenges authoritarianism and mobilize communal agency by employing satire; Ngũgĩ and Mugo in their dramaturgy awaken the people’s revolutionary consciousness and anti-colonial awareness; Rotimi in his artistry emphasizes resilience and empowerment as collective goals for the marginalized people. New Historicism theory propounded by Stephen Greenblatt will be applied to buttress the texts within the cultural, social, and political contexts in which they were written and read. New Historicism argues that literature cannot be isolated from its historical period and this forms the ideological leaning of this study. The methodology shall be qualitative literary analysis using the tools of New Historicism. One of the key findings of this study is that African dramatists operate not merely as artists but as cultural, historical and ideological teachers. Also, literary texts can only bring out their comprehensive meaning if they are studied within their historical, cultural and social frameworks. The study recommends that dramatists continue to engage drama as a platform for social transformation. Academics are encouraged to see literary works as tools for developments rather than mere works of art.
A Comparative Study of Gendered Loneliness in Selected African Novels and Biblical Marital Narratives
This study examines the paradox of marriage as a culturally and theologically celebrated site of companionship and as a recurring space of gendered loneliness in selected African novels and biblical marital narratives. The problem addressed is the tendency of dominant African cultural and Christian discourses to idealise marriage as emotionally fulfilling, socially stabilising and spiritually sanctioned, while giving limited critical attention to the silence, emotional neglect, reproductive anxiety, unequal affection and gendered power relations that may exist within the institution. Using qualitative textual analysis, the study reads Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood and Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions alongside Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, Genesis 29-30 and 1 Samuel 1. The analysis is guided by Social Role Theory and Attachment Theory, which together clarify how culturally assigned marital roles and emotional bonds shape intimacy, alienation and dissatisfaction. The study finds that women's loneliness often emerges from enforced silence, reproductive pressure, emotional neglect, economic dependency and patriarchal authority, while men's loneliness is shaped by expectations of stoicism, provision, control and emotional restraint. By placing African fiction in dialogue with biblical narratives, the paper shows that scripture contains complex representations of companionship, rivalry, barrenness, unequal affection, longing and emotional alienation. The study concludes that marriage in African cultural and Christian contexts requires a more humane reimagining centred on empathy, mutual recognition, emotional reciprocity and gender equity.
A Social Semiotic Analysis of Political Cartoons on the 2023 Nigerian Presidential Election
Political cartoons, as part of visual communication, are powerful tools for critiquing Nigeria’s political culture. This paper analyses some political cartoons on the 2023 Presidential election in Nigeria. The purpose is to expose how some socio-political issues eroded the democratic process during the election period. Political cartoonists used different semiotic resources to capture these issues. Six political cartoons from online sources are purposively selected as the data for this study. The Visual Social Semiotic theory of Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 2006) is the theoretical framework adopted for this study. The selected cartoons are analysed on the three metafunction levels of meaning, namely: representational, interactive and compositional. This enabled an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the cartoons, bringing to the fore societal ills and the shortcomings of the political class. The analysis revealed such themes as the naira redesign policy and its harsh effect on the populace. The cartoons also captured visually, electoral violence, vote buying, and erosion of confidence in the electoral process depicted as ‘the sleeping electorate’. Through the analysis, the cartoons visually exposed the pre-election societal hardships suffered by the average Nigerians right before the presidential election. The cartoons provide a platform for the citizens to reflect and engage in active civic discourse.
Sociopolitical Realities in Contemporary Nigerian Poetry: A New Historicist Reading of Village Voices and A Torrent of Terror
Literature functions not only as artistic expression but also as a textual archive of historical experience, reflecting and shaping the sociopolitical realities from where it emerges. In contemporary Nigerian poetry, the influence between text and history is inseparable, as poets mediate national crises through their work. This paper examines the representation of sociopolitical realities in contemporary Nigerian poetry, through a comparative reading of Village Voices and A Torrent of Terror. While substantial scholarship has explored the protest tradition in Nigerian poetry, less attention has been given to how second generation poetic commitments are rearticulated by third generation poets within the changing historical contexts. Through the theoretical lens of New Historicism, the paper investigates the reciprocal relationship between poetic discourse and sociopolitical structures of power, ideology, and history. Using qualitative textual analysis and close reading of five selected poems from each collection, the paper interrogates themes of leadership failure, corruption, inequality, and insecurity. The findings indicate that Osundare’s poetry critiques military authoritarianism and economic crisis of the early 1980s, whereas Aboh’s work documents democratic disillusionment and insurgency in the Fourth Republic. Despite generational differences, both poets function as cultural archivists and dissenting voices, preserving alternative historical narratives. The paper concludes that Nigerian poetry remains an active site of ideological contestation and historical archive.
Irony, Satire, and Iconoclasm in Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God and Mongo Beti’s The Poor Christ of Bomba
This paper investigates the use of irony, satire, and iconoclasm in Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God and Mongo Beti’s The Poor Christ of Bomba as critical narrative strategies for interrogating colonial and missionary domination in Africa. The study further demonstrates that iconoclasm functions as a significant mechanism through which indigenous belief systems are challenged and transformed, producing cultural disruption, psychological displacement, and new forms of negotiation between traditional and colonial structures. Achebe’s tragic irony highlights the vulnerabilities and internal tensions of indigenous authority under colonial pressure, while Beti’s satire critiques the arrogance and contradictions of missionary power. The study adopts a qualitative research approach based on close textual analysis of the two primary novels. The analysis is guided by the theoretical insights of postcolonial theory, to explore issues of colonial power, ideological domination, epistemic violence, mimicry, hybridity, and the contested formation of identity under colonial conditions. The findings reveal that irony and satire operate beyond their literary functions as powerful forms of counter-discourse that expose the contradictions, moral inconsistencies, and instability of colonial and missionary authority. The study concludes that both novels challenge simplified notions of colonial domination and resistance by presenting colonial encounters as complex spaces shaped by ambivalence, adaptation, and unintended consequences. Thus, Arrow of God and The Poor Christ of Bomba provide enduring critiques of cultural imperialism while revealing the ongoing struggles surrounding authority, identity, and self-definition in postcolonial African societies.
Colonial Impact on the African Child: The Case of Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions
The African child has always been an under-explored entity in the discussion of colonialism as regards its effects on the African society. The nature and quantum of destruction colonialism exerted on African natives aside the brutal effects of slavery. This work focuses on the experiences of the African child in the colonised society in a bid to discover how colonial legacies influence the present growth and future life of Africans. Due to colonial impact, the African child is in a constant struggle to discover his or her true identity. The child is found to be a divided self and always spends his/her days in psychological stress. He or She is constantly in search of self-identity. The society makes this discovery harder because, it finds it difficult to accept the hybridised child as one of its own children. The societal ignorance of the plight of the African child in this search for identity worsens his/her psychological injuries and further alienates the child from her people, thereby leaving the child stranded in a place of confusion. Employing Postcolonial theory in its interpretation and interrogation, this study investigates Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions, focusing on the impact of colonialism on the African child. It is discovered that colonialism left Africans culturally and psychologically dislocated; and that parents will always transmit this “infection” unto their children, who suffer the disease. This research recommends further exploration of the state of the African child in the present society and calls on the African government to help her children recover from the perplexities imposed on them by colonial extremities.
Sociolinguistic Motivations for the Use of Nigerian Pidgin English in Nigeria
English pidginisation is a process by which pidgin English develops through the contact of English with other languages. While structural English pidginisation refers to the simplification in using the English, sociolinguistic English pidginisation is the process by which the English is transformed by society. Although the sociolinguistic pidginisation of English is observed to have received considerable attention as much that of structural pidginisation, the need for reinvestigating it, in addition to finding out how Nigerians use the pidgin for survival, becomes necessary. Using a qualitative research design, this study investigates the social motivations for the use of Nigerian Pidgin English among Nigerians and examines how such usage influences their social and economic experiences. Ten participants, comprising males and females, purposively selected from diverse social and educational backgrounds, were interviewed. Results for the first objective reveal that nine social factors including low educational attainment, accommodation familiarity and solidarity motivate Nigerians to use Nigerian English pidgin in the Nigerian context. For the second objective, results indicate that using the Nigerian pidgin English positively shapes the living conditions of Nigerians by enabling them to trade favourably and campaign for votes in politics. Regardless of the increasing negative attitudes formed towards NPE and the low status it continues to attract, it remains the most effective means for bringing together in conversation people from different backgrounds in Nigeria. As a language of survival, a Nigerian hardly avoids involving in a compelling circumstances to use the NPE.
Antiheroes in African Literature: A Study of Obi Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease and Baako Onipa in Ayi Kwei Armah's Fragments
This study develops Dimkpa, a theory for classifying antiheroes grounded in the Igbo worldview of heroism. Applying Dimkpa to Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease and Ayi Kwei-Armah’s Fragments, the paper analyses protagonists Obi Okonkwo and Baako Onipa through the lens of Igbo communal values, spiritual obligations, and social expectations – criteria often marginalised in Western critical frameworks. The analysis shows that Obi and Baako function as antiheroes not merely through individual moral failure, but through a breakdown in their relationship to communal norms that define personhood in Igbo thought. This study points to Western education as the key factor responsible for Obi and Baako’s alienation and their disconnection from traditional norms. The findings demonstrate that Dimkpa offers a more culturally coherent framework for reading African protagonists, and suggest that integrating indigenous value systems can correct blind spots in dominant literary theory while instituting more effective ways of teaching African literature.
Briticisms and Americanisms in Nigerian English: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Variation and Motivation
This study examines the sociolinguistic interplay of Briticisms and Americanisms in Nigerian English, focusing on the extent, patterns, and motivations underlying their concurrent usage among educated Nigerians. Anchored in the sociolinguistic theory of variation, the model of regional varieties, and social network theory, the study investigates how social structures, exposure, and media influence shape linguistic preferences. Data were collected through an online survey of 208 educated speakers in Lagos State, comprising both graduates and undergraduates. Quantitative analysis of lexical choices reveals a clear dominance of Americanisms over Briticisms across most lexical items, indicating a shift towards American English norms. Younger respondents and females displayed stronger tendencies towards American variants, while older speakers retained some preference for British forms. Media exposure, particularly to American entertainment and digital platforms, emerged as the most significant motivation for this linguistic variation, cited by 89% of participants. The findings underscore the increasing hybridity of Nigerian English, reflecting both its colonial heritage and globalised linguistic influences. The study concludes that the coexistence of Briticisms and Americanisms is an inevitable outcome of global linguistic diffusion and recommends heightened awareness of these variants in language pedagogy and planning, to foster informed and context-appropriate usage rather than rigid adherence to a single norm.
Infrastructural Semiotics and Infrastructural Citizenship: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Linguistic Stratification and the Hydrosocial Contract in Urban Cameroon
This sociolinguistic ethnography introduces and operationalizes the concepts of "infrastructural semiotics" and "infrastructural citizenship" through a Critical Discourse Analysis to examine how power, inequality, and civic belonging are discursively constructed around urban water access in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Through a 12-month multimodal study conducted between January and December 2022, this paper synthesizes political economy and Critical Discourse Analysis within a dialectical-relational framework to dissect the stratified linguistic markets materializing around hydrological infrastructure. The analysis identifies and deconstructs three dominant registers: a French-dominant state-corporate register that deploys technocratic depoliticization, a multilingual grassroots-complaint register that functions as a tactical counter-discourse, and an English-French NGO-developmental register that propagates a neoliberal ethos. Drawing on approximately 150 hours of recorded interactions, 65 semi-structured interviews, a systematic multimodal photographic corpus, and policy documents, the paper demonstrates that discourse is a core infrastructural technology where linguistic competence constitutes symbolic capital, directly mediating one's ability to claim rights. It argues that the struggle for water is fundamentally a struggle over the linguistic and semiotic terms of recognition within a fragmented state, revealing the co-constitutive relationship between material scarcity and communicative injustice in a polity defined by its colonial linguistic legacy and profound diversity of over 280 indigenous languages. The paper concludes that infrastructural citizenship is forged in this contested terrain, with significant implications for understanding the nexus of language, power, and resource justice in multilingual, postcolonial states.
A Functional Linguistic Analysis of Lexical Cohesion in HIV/AIDS Publications
This study examines lexical cohesion in selected HIV/AIDS publications, specifically magazines and flyers, to determine how lexical cohesive devices contribute to clarity, coherence, and textual effectiveness in health communication. Anchored on Bloor and Bloor’s (2004) Functional Linguistics framework, it examines the use of reiteration (repetition, synonymy/near synonymy, and superordination) and collocation (complementaries, antonyms, converses, part–whole, part–part relations, and links) in texts sourced from accredited health bodies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Nigeria. Adopting a qualitative and quantitative research design, the study analyzes twenty clauses extracted from three selected texts to identify and categorize lexical cohesive ties. Findings reveal a high frequency of lexical cohesive devices, with reiteration occurring slightly more frequently than collocation. While repetition emerges as the most dominant strategy, serving to emphasize key health messages such as HIV testing, counselling, prevention, and stakeholder engagement, collocational pairs, particularly antonyms and complementaries contribute significantly to meaning-making by making HIV/AIDS discourse cohere and sustain textual meaning. The study underscores the significance of these devices in organizing clear, coherent, and effective healthcare texts. It concludes that lexical cohesion is central to the textualization of HIV/AIDS publications which are shown to be highly cohesive and communicatively potent in educating both infected and affected populations. These findings have implications for the development of more effective health communication materials and highlight the crucial role of lexical cohesion in the communicative effectiveness of public health texts.
Wholeness, Individuation, and the African Experience in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
This study explores the intricate dynamics of wholeness and individuation within the African experience as represented in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Drawing on Carl Jung’s theory of individuation and from postcolonial discourse, the study explores how identity is shaped within a society disrupted by colonial intrusion. It adopts a qualitative, interpretative approach, using close textual analysis to examine character development, social structures, and symbolic patterns that reflect the tension between individual identity and communal values. The study finds that wholeness in Achebe’s work is not presented as a fixed state but as a continuous process that involves balancing personal identity with cultural, spiritual, and communal commitments. The study recommends further interdisciplinary research that bridges African literature, psychology, and cultural studies, as well as comparative analyses across African texts to deepen understanding of post-colonialidentity, psychological healing, and cultural regeneration.
Nigerian Writers as Social Critics: A Study of the Poetry of Niyi Osundare and Ezenwa-Ohaeto
There is a close symbiosis between literature and society. One can say that both of them are two sides of a coin. Writers derive their inspiration from the society and this explains the social realities that pervade the literary productions of writers from Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. Since Nigerian independence, Nigerian writers have explored social issues that bedeviled the society. Notable among them is bad leadership and experiences show that bad leadership is the bane of Nigerian society. This research reemphasizes/re-echoes the menace of bad leadership in Nigerian Society and how Nigerian writers have made efforts at “righting” this anomaly through its condemnation in their literary productions. This paper studied Songs of the Season by Niyi Osundare and Songs of a Traveler by Ezenwa-Ohaeto. The analysis revealed that these poets under study are committed writers who used their works for the betterment of Nigerian society. The paper is hinged on Georg Lukacs’ Reflection theory. The basic assumption of this theory is that a text will reflect the society that has produced it and this is what the poets under study did in their collections of poetry. The paper concluded on the note that bad leadership affects every section of the society. Again, it shows that some political leaders in Nigeria are found wanting in this regard. The paper suggests that all hands should be on deck to reduce its occurrence or better still, promote actions that will lead to its annihilation from the Nigerian society.
Gender Differences in Metacognitive Reading Strategies in Academic Text Processing among Nigerian Undergraduates
Reading academic texts is a fundamental skill for success in higher education, as it enables students to engage with disciplinary knowledge, interpret complex ideas, and develop critical thinking skills. However, many undergraduates experience difficulties in comprehending academic materials. One important factor that supports effective reading is the use of metacognitive reading strategies, which allow learners to plan, monitor, and evaluate their understanding during reading. Although these strategies have been widely studied, variations in their use among different learner groups remain underexplored. One such area concerns gender-based differences in strategy use. This study therefore investigates gender differences in metacognitive reading strategies in academic text processing among Nigerian undergraduates. The study is anchored in Metacognitive Theory (Flavell, 1979) and adopts the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) framework (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002), which categorizes strategies into global, problem-solving, and support strategies. Using a stratified random sampling technique, data were collected from 200 undergraduates (100 males and 100 females) drawn from three Nigerian universities: Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka; Imo State University, Owerri; and Tansian University, Umunya. Descriptive statistics were used to identify patterns of strategy use, while independent samples t-tests were conducted to examine gender differences. The findings reveal that students employ all three categories of metacognitive strategies. However, female students reported significantly higher use of global and support strategies than male students, while no significant gender difference was found in problem-solving strategies. The results indicate that gender plays a role in shaping students’ metacognitive engagement with academic texts and suggest the need for more inclusive and strategy-focused reading instruction in Nigerian universities.
Contextualising the Female Sublime: A Feminist Reading of Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo’s House of Symbols
Feminism, an ideology which revolves around the refusal by women to be defined by male-established models of femininity, has gone through a lot of mutations. From being an agitation by women for the equality of the sexes, it has graduated to an advocacy for the propagation of a peculiar genre of literature in which women are both the authors and subject matter of the code. The argument for this new mode of literature is that the true identity and potential of women can best be realized when women begin to tell their own stories. This study seeks to establish the plausibility or lack of it of the argument that supports this new mode of female literary identity. Relying on women-centred literary theories such as gynocritics and the female sublime, the study distills the way some female writers are seeking to demolish the structures on which male theory is founded. To bring this to the fore, the study ventures into the audacious province of this new genre of literature that explores female experience from the point of view of female writers. It establishes that the novel under study and its author are products of this radical displacement that is being sought by women. This is done through female characters who reject male codes and patriarchal systems that place women at the lowest rung in the chain of beings. By so doing, they deflect male sexual egos that perceive women as the weaker sex. Through the heroic exploits of her female characters, the author shatters male theories and patriarchal ideologies. The study then submits that the author has not only given impetus to the idea of the female sublime, she has diffused and supplanted the old-fashioned sublime of male domination through female characters who neither subscribe to nor are constrained by any patriarchal ideology.
Phonetic Variation in Nigerian Spoken English: A Corpus-Informed Framework for Teaching Pronunciation
English pronunciation teaching in Nigeria tends towards external norms such as Received Pronunciation (RP), overlooking the systematic phonology of Nigerian English NE (Nigerian English) and reinforcing linguistic insecurity among learners. Research, including corpus-based work on the International Corpus of English–Nigeria (ICE–Nigeria), shows that NE has developed stable segmental and suprasegmental features shaped by multilingual contact and social factors. This paper integrates sociophonetic, World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca perspectives to examine phonetic variation in NE and its implications for pedagogy. It highlights recurrent features - vowel neutralisation, diphthong monophthongisation, consonant substitution, cluster simplification and syllable-timed rhythm - as systematic patterns rather than random “errors”. On this basis, the paper proposes a four-step corpus-informed framework for pronunciation teaching: identifying common NE features, distinguishing those that affect intelligibility, using corpus evidence to set instructional priorities and reshaping teacher attitudes towards endonormative models. The study argues that aligning classroom practice with corpus evidence can promote intelligibility, affirm identity and support the codification of NE as a legitimate variety within global English.
Exonyms in Cameroon English: Reinforcing Socio-Political Inclusiveness
This study investigated the formation and socio-political significance of place-name exonyms in Cameroon English. It focused primarily on how such naming practices reflect identity negotiation and linguistic inclusiveness in a post-colonial bilingual Cameroon. The study adopted a mixed method design, a research combined documentary analysis and an attitudinal inquiry. The linguistic data were collected from official public service documents, including official communiques, application letters and complaints. And supplemented with informal discussions involving Anglophone Cameroonians in Yaoundé. From these sources, 20 exonym-endonym pairs were identified and classified according to their phonological and orthographic processes. In addition, attitudinal data were obtained through purposive sampling of 273 Francophone respondents from communities whose place names had undergone exonymisation. 154 educated Anglophone respondents were also interviewed on their motivations for English-based naming variants. Quantitative analysis was conducted using percentage distributions, while qualitative interpretations were guided by Tajfel and Turner’s (1979) Social Identity Theory. The findings revealed three dominant exonymic processes in Cameroon English: allophonic variation, diacritic omission, and orthographic simplification. Attitudinal evidence showed broad acceptance of English-based variants when referring to major national locations (over 80% among Francophone respondents and 94% among Anglophones), but resistance emerged when modifications concern local communal names. The study concluded that exonym formation in Cameroon English functions not only as linguistic adaptation but also as a symbolic strategy through which minority speakers negotiate visibility and inclusion within unevenly implemented bilingual policies. The study recommended the dire need for clearer national guidelines on place-name standardisation to balance communicative accessibility with cultural authenticity.
Influence of Digital Language Movements on National Language Policy: Perspectives from Activists and Policymakers
Digital language movements’ grassroots initiatives that use online platforms to advocate for linguistic recognition, orthographic standardization, and minority language visibility are increasingly shaping the landscape of national language policy. While scholarship in language planning has often emphasized state-driven processes, the influence of digitally mediated activism on policy design and implementation remains underexamined. This article investigates how such movements interact with national policy frameworks by analyzing perspectives from activists and policymakers. Drawing on campaign archives, policy documents, and semi-structured interviews, the study shows that digital initiatives operate through three main strategies: setting policy agendas via social media visibility, producing corpus resources such as lexicons and orthographies, and mobilizing pressure through transnational advocacy. Policymakers, however, perceive these initiatives ambivalently acknowledging their symbolic and cultural value while questioning their representativeness and practical feasibility. The findings highlight three key dynamics: digital activism is most effective in shaping early agenda-setting; activist-generated resources gain traction when validated by institutional allies; and structural policy adoption depends on bridging the digital divide and aligning with bureaucratic priorities. By foregrounding both tensions and collaborations between grassroots linguistic citizenship and institutional policy-making, the study advances understanding of how digital platforms reconfigure language planning in the twenty-first century and offers implications for more inclusive and sustainable policy design.
Re-Conceptualising Gold-Digging as Gender-Neutral in Obinna Udenwe’s Years of Shame
This paper interrogates not only the representation of Gold-Digging in Nigeria’s contemporary socio-cultural and economic narrative, but also contends that the depiction of male characters as gold diggers delineates shifting constructions of masculinity. Moreover, it also explores how masculinity is performed, negotiated, and challenged in Obinna Udenwe’s Years of Shame (2025) with a focus on the male characters. The article seeks to re-conceptualise the idea of gold-digging as a gender-neutral phenomenon. Given the inevitability of rising socio-economic challenges, and the changing gender dynamics, the struggle for survival has become a sordid reality that has contested many misconceptions. In Nigeria’s social discourse on women, gold digging has, over the years, become increasingly associated with men. Recently, writers like Udenwe in his work Years of Shame (2025) substantiates that gold digging is not gendered stereotyped. However, in seeking to extend this notion, the novel seeks to expose gold digging as a societal disorder not limited to the female folk but also to the male folk, which the critics of the work have paid little attention to. Hence, relying on the theories of Bourdieu’s capital theory, Butler’s gender performativity, and Homo Economicus through which this article is analysed, the paper concludes that the issue of gold digging transcends the purview of female folk, but also thrives within the sphere of male folk.
Ghosts in the Machine: Margaret Atwood's The Testaments and a Hauntology of the Unpublished in the Born-Digital Literary Archive
This paper establishes a new critical paradigm for the study of contemporary literary archives by arguing that the unpublished, born-digital draft-conceived as a Derridean spectre-fundamentally destabilises the ontological security of the published literary work. It posits that the digital archive's exhaustive preservation of compositional artefacts (deleted passages, fragmented files, abandoned versions) does not simply expand the genetic dossier but inaugurates a hauntological textual condition. This condition demands an ethics of spectral literacy. Through a theoretical case study of Margaret Atwood's novel, The Testaments (2019), this research performs a spectral collation—a critical reading practice that attends to how the published text itself enacts hauntological dynamics through its themes of suppressed narratives, structural silences, and preoccupation with documentation. The analysis demonstrates that these textual features anticipate and mirror the archival condition, revealing how the published work is always already haunted by what it cannot contain. The paper concludes that literary scholarship must abandon the editorial dream of a clean text and instead develop protocols for engaging the archive as a haunted system, where meaning is generated through the fraught dialogue between the realised and the repressed.
A Socio-Semiotic Analysis of Ideological Multimodal Framing of Selected 2023 Gubernatorial Candidates of Nigeria’s General Election Campaign Posters
The study examined campaign posters produced to advertise gubernatorial candidates in Nigeria’s 2023 general elections. The paper critically investigated text producers’ ideological framing of semiotic resources in campaign posters which is intended to present gubernatorial candidates as desirable choices during the campaigns. The purposive sampling method was adopted for the selection of data from posters produced for gubernatorial candidates of All Progressives Congress (APC), Labour Party (LP), and People Democratic Party (PDP) in Enugu, Kano, Lagos and River States. The data gathered included those produced and circulated between September 2022 and March 2023. This period covers the beginning of the campaigns for the general elections to 24 hours before the gubernatorial elections. The research adopted a qualitative descriptive approach grounded in Kress and van Leeuwen’s social semiotic theory, focusing on the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions in the posters. The findings of the study revealed that candidates across the four states employed a combination of ethnic, religious, welfare, collective and cultural ideologies to appeal to voters’ identities. In addition, the analysis showed that the campaign posters were carefully designed with verbal and visual semiotic resources to project the candidates as ideal leaders while subtly delegitimising their opponents. The study concluded that campaign posters are not merely promotional tools, but are ideological constructs shaped by Nigeria’s socio-political realities.
Power and Manipulative Function of Language: Critical Discourse Analysis of Utoh-Ezeajugh’s Our Wives Have Gone Mad Again
This study investigates the intersection of power and manipulative function of language in Tracie Uto-Ezeajughi’s Our Wives Have Gone Mad Again using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the methodological approach. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Norman Fairclough the research explores how language serves as a tool for both maintaining and challenging power structures within patriarchal Nigerian societies. Fairclough’s three-dimensional model-textual analysis, discourse practice, and socio-cultural practice provides the basic tools for analyzing how characters use language to assert dominance, resist subjugation, and negotiate identity. The study adopts purposive sampling in selecting excerpts from the play. Specific dialogues and scenes that foreground power relations, gender dominance, and manipulative use of language were intentionally selected for analysis. The play reveals how one gender deploys language to reinforce gender hierarchies and control, and how the other gender subverts these manipulations through satire, interrogations, imperative and assertive speech. Through detailed textual and contextual analysis, the study demonstrates that language functions not merely as communication, but as a strategic instrument of power, resistance, and social change. The findings underscore the role of discourse in shaping gender relations and contributing to broader ideological struggles within postcolonial African settings.
Naming the Sacred Spaces: A Pragmatic Analysis on Metaphors in Pentecostal Church Naming Strategies
The rapid proliferation of Pentecostal churches in Abuja, Nigeria, has often been attributed to urbanisation. The names given to these churches are striking and far from arbitrary; rather, they are deliberate and creative coinages. Church founders employ a wide range of metaphors in naming their churches. These metaphors function not merely as labels but as communicative strategies through which identity is constructed, spiritual emphasis is indexed, and potential congregants are attracted. Although existing scholarship on church names has largely focused on classification, patterns, structure, and stylistic features, comparatively little attention has been paid to the metaphors underlying Pentecostal church naming practices. This paper therefore examines the metaphors embedded in Pentecostal church naming conventions. Drawing on Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Levinson’s (1983) theory of indexicality in pragmatics, the study analyses forty Pentecostal church names in Abuja, Nigeria. These names were obtained online from a directory of Pentecostal churches in Abuja. The findings reveal several recurring metaphorical themes, including metaphors of God, Christians, warfare, power, the church, nature, and transformation. These metaphors encapsulate doctrinal foundations, mission, and vision, while also serving as indicators of spiritual emphasis, ideology, and religious identity. In addition, they function as branding strategies for places of worship and as tools for persuasion, group cohesion, and socio-religious positioning. The study demonstrates that Pentecostal naming practices constitute a form of religious pragmatics in which metaphor operates as a powerful resource for encoding theology, shaping communal identity, and transforming physical spaces into linguistically “sacred” symbols.