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.
Literature and Global Peace Initiatives in the 21st Century: Achebe’s Search for Genuine Reconciliation and Peace in There Was a Country
Literature has long served as a medium through which writers reflect and interrogate the social, political, and economic realities of their societies. Through characterization, language, and thematic exploration, literary artists communicate important messages about human experiences and societal challenges. This study examines the role of literature in promoting peace and reconciliation, adopting a qualitative research design with real focus on textual analysis with particular reference to Chinua Achebe's There Was a Country. The paper explores how Achebe employs his memoir of the Nigerian Civil War to highlight the devastating consequences of war, ethnic division, and political marginalization. The study adopts the Cosmopolitan Theory propounded by Diogenes the Cynic, Immanuel kant among others. Drawing on the concept of global peace initiatives, which advocate human development, social justice, and peaceful coexistence, the study argues that Achebe's work serves as a powerful call for national healing and genuine reconciliation. The memoir exposes the suffering endured by the Igbo as a people during and after the war while emphasizing the need for equity, inclusion, and lasting peace in a multicultural society. The paper concludes that There Was a Country transcends historical documentation to become a significant literary intervention that promotes peace-building and challenges the persistent marginalization of affected communities in post-war Nigeria.
A Multimodal Discourse on Social Media: Whatsapp, Facebook, and Twitter (X) as Sites of Political and Social Interaction in Nigeria
The emergence of social media has changed how people in Nigeria engage politically and socially. It has created platforms where citizens negotiate their identities, share their opinions, and organize civic actions. This study looks at communication on WhatsApp, Facebook, and X (Twitter), focusing on how language, images, and symbols interact to convey meaning, shape public opinion, and influence collective actions. Using a qualitative approach, we analyzed forty-five carefully chosen posts from the three platforms through Multimodal Social Semiotics and Critical Discourse Analysis. The findings show that users intentionally combine text, images, videos, and hashtags to create messages that express political criticism, social insights, and civic support. WhatsApp is centered on close, community-focused chats. Facebook prioritizes multimedia content and public engagement, while X supports brief, real-time discussions. These various resources not only deepen meaning but also play key roles in promoting resistance, humor, and mobilization. The study points out how technology and individual actions work together, showing how social media users in Nigeria navigate issues of power, identity, and societal conditions. By placing multimodal communication within broader social and political settings, this research helps us understand how digital platforms influence public conversations, civic involvement, and political awareness in modern Nigeria.
Navigating Stigma and Silence: Representations of Mental Health in What if ……by Linda Mustapha
This paper explores the complex representation of mental health issues in Linda Mustapha’s text What If…, emphasizing the relationship between societal shame, cultural silence, and the protagonists’ inner psychological landscapes. The hush around psychological suffering frequently acts as a secondary antagonist in many modern literary works that come from areas where mental health is still frowned upon. Mustapha’s work offers a critical perspective on these relationships, showing how individual suffering is made worse by systemic neglect and the fear of societal rejection. The study uses qualitative content research analysis method, trauma and psychoanalytical theories to examine how Mustapha mirrors the confusing experience of mental illness using literary tropes including internal monologue, symbolism, and fragmented pacing. The author goes beyond the technical categories of diseases to presenting mental health as a common human experience that is greatly impacted by regional customs and religious interpretations rather than as a Western construct. What If… is an important addition to the expanding corpus of work on psychological advocacy and the de-stigmatization of mental illness in the contemporary era because it breaks the quiet and forces readers to face their prejudices. What If… functions as a counter-narrative to the “culture of silence.” According to the text, characters are often forced into a state of “performative wellness” because they lack the vocabulary to express their emotional suffering. This research concludes that Mustapha calls for self discovery and promotes a revolutionary change toward institutional assistance and empathy throughout the protagonist’s journey.
Border Languages: The Semiotics of Language on the Move in Refugee Poetry
In an era defined by migration crises and the displacement of millions, sustaining linguistic identity and belonging across borders has become both an existential and educational concern. This study examines how African refugee poetry transforms experiences of exile into semiotic acts of meaning-making and solidarity. Focusing on ‘Gbenga Adeoba’s Leaving Agadez and Rain Choral alongside Bhion Achimba’s Winter with Ovid, the study explores how poetic language negotiates trauma, mobility, and belonging within transnational contexts. Grounded primarily in Semiotic Theory (Kristeva; Kress & van Leeuwen) and Postcolonial Sociolinguistics (Blommaert; Canagarajah), the study adopts a qualitative interpretive methodology involving close textual reading and discourse-semiotic analysis. The analysis identifies three dominant patterns: silence and song as languages of survival; borders as dialogic spaces of encounter; and exile as a process of linguistic reconstruction. These patterns demonstrate how poetic discourse functions as a symbolic response to displacement and marginalization. The findings reveal that refugee poetry extends beyond testimony to become a form of border literacy through which displaced subjects negotiate identity, memory, and belonging. By theorizing “border language” as a semiotic resource emerging from mobility and displacement, the study contributes to contemporary discussions on migration, language, and literacy. It further demonstrates how poetic language fosters intercultural understanding and reimagines belonging across geographical and linguistic boundaries.
Love Beyond Gender and Sexuality: A Queer Perspective of Chinelo Okparanta’s Under The Udala Trees
This study examines the issue of homosexuality using Queer Theory to determine if homosexuality is biological or a social construction. The paper adopts Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees as a case study to ascertain whether same-sex attraction is biologically determined or socially constructed. The paper explores the issue of homophobia and self hatred of homosexuals occasioned by compulsory heterosexuality and heterocentrism of the predominantly heterosexual world. The study further interrogates the concept of biological essentialism, which held that a certain number of human populations are naturally homosexual. Furthermore, the research paper critically engages with cultural, religious and political discourses that shape attitudes towards same-sex love and relationships in Nigeria society. It underscores the role of narrative fiction in challenging dominant ideologies and offering alternatives understandings of gender, identity and sexual desire. The paper highlights how language, social structures, and social expectations contribute to repression or expression of homosexual tendencies. The study draws conclusion that all humans have the capacity to develop, either heterosexual or homosexual feeling depending on one’s priorities, environment and association. The paper discovers and establishes that heterosexuality is biological, while homosexuality lacks substantial evidence to be considered natural; therefore the paper recommends social construction.
Discursive Strategies and Power Dynamics: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Nigerian Newspaper Coverage of the #EndBadGovernance Protests
This study undertakes a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of Nigerian newspapers’ coverage of the #EndBadGovernance protests, a social movement that swept across Nigeria in 2024. The protests, which were sparked by wide spread discontent with the government’s handling of critical issues such as corruption, economic mismanagement, and human right abuses, presented a unique opportunity to examine the role of media discourse in shaping public opinion and influencing social movements. Using a CDA framework developed by Van Dijk, the researchers examine the discursive strategies employed by Nigerian newspapers in their coverage of the protests, including the linguistic and rhetorical devices used to construct and negotiate stance, ideologies, and power relations. The researchers also analyze the power dynamics reflected and constructed through the discourse, including the ways in which the newspapers position themselves in relation to the government and the protesters. The findings of this work reveal that Nigerian newspapers employed a range of discursive strategies to construct and negotiate stance, ideologies, and power relations, including the use of evaluative language, emotive appeals, and intertextual references. Also, this study shows that the power dynamics reflected and constructed through the discourse were complex and multifaceted, with some newspapers aligning with the government’s narratives while others supported the protesters’ demands. This study contributes to our understanding of the role of media discourse in shaping public opinion and influencing social movements, and highlights the importance of critical discourse analysis as a methodology for examining the complex relationships between language, power, and social inequality. The findings of this research have implications for media practitioners, policy makers, and social movement activist seeking to understand the role of media discourse in shaping public opinion and influencing social change.
Body and Person Metaphors in Nigerian Inaugural Political Speeches 1999-2023
This paper interrogates body and person metaphors in five inaugural speeches of Nigerian presidents since the inception of democracy in 1999, also known as the Fourth Republic. Specifically, it identifies metaphorical linguistic expressions in the data and argues that these expressions, though innocuous, have profound ideological and rhetorical potentials in framing political identity, individual speaker agency and national consciousness as well as highlighting interested versions of reality while obfuscating others. Using the synergy of corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics and critical linguistics as espoused in critical metaphor analysis (CMA), and five inaugural speeches of the five Nigerian presidents between 1999 and 2023, the paper respectively identifies the conventional metaphorical linguistic expressions in the selected data by applying the Metaphorical Identification Procedure (MIP) of the Pragglejazz Group, derives the underlying conceptual metaphors in the identified metaphorical expressions through the conceptual mappings in source and target domains and finally subjects them to critical discourse analysis (CDA) to pragmatically explain their rich rhetorical and ideological underpinnings in the Nigerian socio-political landscape. Findings show preponderance of body and person metaphors cognitively mapping Nigerian nation, electorate, economy, corruption, democracy, government and public institutions ontologically to abstract concepts as sickness, growth, survival, resilience, volition which affect the human body and personhood, or structurally as possessing human bodily attributes with potentials for performing certain actions. While all administrations rely on these body and person metaphors, their emphases shift according to political context and priorities: moral cleansing, generational responsibility, developmental optimism, disciplinary purification, and restorative healing. In all the speeches, the speakers position themselves in paternalistic, messianic and familial relationship with their audiences, thus construing shared obligation towards bodily and personhood preservation. The paper concludes that while this participatory framing can be empowering, it can also subtly shift responsibility for solution of national problems onto the public, thus potentially masking governmental failures by emphasizing collective blame or duty.
Pragmatic Acts in Nigerian Pidgin Football Commentary
Nigerian Pidgin (NP) football commentary serves as a dynamic platform for engaging diverse audiences, yet its pragmatic mechanisms remain under-explored. This study addresses this gap by applying Jacob Mey’s (2001) Pragmatic Acts Theory to examine pragmatic acts (practs) and their contextual variations (allopracts) in NP commentary. Through qualitative discourse analysis of ten purposively sampled match-event composites from Nigerian national teams, clubs, or players, the study covers the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), the 2023–2024 Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL), and selected 2025 fixtures. It investigates how commentators deploy practs such as praising, criticizing, encouraging, and predicting within micro-, meso-, and macro-pragmemes. The objectives are threefold: to categorise common practs and allopracts in NP commentary, to examine how these acts reflect culturally and situationally driven pragmemes, and to assess how these pragmatic strategies foster inclusivity and emotional connection in Nigeria’s multilingual media landscape. Findings reveal that NP commentary systematically layers pragmatic acts to narrate events, entertain, critique, and affirm cultural identity, demonstrating the language’s adaptability, immediacy, and expressive depth. The study contributes a novel linguistic perspective to sports discourse research and offers practical implications for broadcaster training, showing that leveraging NP’s pragmatic richness can enhance audience engagement and validate its professional status in Nigerian sports broadcasting.
Analysis of Practs and Allopracts in Typical Email Scams
Email scams continue to pose a significant threat to cyber security by exploiting users’ trust through deceptive communication that imitates legitimate institutional messages. While prior research has predominantly focused on technical defences and psychological manipulation, there is a notable gap in understanding the pragmatic mechanisms scammers use to craft persuasive and deceptive emails. This study addresses this gap by applying Jacob Mey’s Pragmatic Act theory to analyse the pragmatic acts (practs) and their linguistic variations (allopracts) commonly employed in email scams. Through qualitative discourse analysis of a diverse corpus of phishing messages, this research identifies how scammers strategically deploy practs such as warnings, requests, and promises within socially recognised communication patterns -pragmemes to increase message credibility and pressure recipients into compliance. The objectives are threefold: to categorise the common practs and allopracts in typical email scams, to examine how these acts replicate trusted institutional and social pragmemes, and to assess how raising awareness of these pragmatic strategies can enhance users’ ability to detect email scam (phishing) attempts. The findings demonstrate that email scams systematically manipulate pragmatic norms to appear authentic, revealing the essential role of pragmatic competence in recognising and resisting such threats. This study contributes a novel linguistic perspective to email scams research and offers practical implications for cyber security education, suggesting that enhancing pragmatic awareness among users can improve their defences against email scam (phishing) attacks and strengthen overall cyber resilience.
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.