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.
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.
Declarative Constructions in Igbo and Mandarin Chinese: A Comparative Analysis
This study on declarative constructions in Igbo and Mandarin Chinese is necessitated by the ever increasing population of Igbo first language (L1) speakers learning Mandarin Chinese (MC) as a second language (L2). Igbo as a member of the new Benue-Congo group of the Niger-Congo language family is quite distinct from MC which is the standard variety of Chinese, a member of the Sino-Tibetan language. From the origin of both languages, it is right to assume that there could be differences in their systems and these differences could translate to impending challenges for the learners. With the application of descriptive analysis, the study examines the constituent structures of declarative sentences, pointing out their similarities and differences as obtainable in both languages. Data were elicited from grammar texts in both languages as well through native speaker intuition. Findings show that the two languages have the basic SVO word order though the constituent structures vary greatly. These differences abound in the nominal position of the determiners, the presence of numeral classifiers in Chinese NP, the position of adverbial elements, interrogative markers, as well as the negation strategies in the VP of both languages. Based on the aforementioned, this paper concludes that any Igbo L2 learner of Chinese should be mindful of the structural differences not withstanding that both languages have same basic sentence pattern so that there will be a proper understanding of the declarative operations in both languages. Such awareness in turn, should enable them to strategically adapt their learning approaches, which would enhance their performance and facilitate a more effective learning strategy for the Chinese language. This consciousness would help learners minimize learning and negative transfer.
Beyond the Literal: Pragmatic Modulation in the 2023 Nigerian Presidential Campaign Speeches of Peter Obi of Labour Party
Political campaign discourse extends beyond literal meanings, relying on pragmatic strategies to shape public perception and influence voter behaviour. This study examines pragmatic modulation in the 2023 Nigerian presidential campaign speeches of Mr. Peter Obi, focusing on how linguistic strategies such as implicature, presupposition, metaphor, euphemism, and lexical pragmatics were employed to construct political narratives. The research adopts a qualitative discourse-analytic approach within the framework of Speech Act Theory and Relevance Theory in analyzing two purposively selected speeches: Obi’s pre-election address at Chatham House and his post-election speech following the Supreme Court judgment. The study identifies how Obi strategically adjusted his language to maximize contextual relevance, minimize cognitive effort, and enhance audience engagement. His pre-election speech emphasized reformist ideals, employing presuppositions and metaphors to frame governance challenges and solutions. His post-election speech, in contrast, modulated tone and implicature to manage political disappointment while reinforcing a continued political movement. By examining these shifts, the study highlights how pragmatic modulation is instrumental in shaping campaign rhetoric and post-election discourse. Findings contribute to political discourse and Nigerian political communication studies, offering insights into how candidates navigate sociopolitical realities, voter expectations, and electoral outcomes through language. The study underscores the need for further research into pragmatic strategies in African political discourse and their broader implications for democratic engagement. Keywords: , , ,
The Context of Election Memes: A Study of Nigeria's 2015 Presidential Elections
Internet memes, deployed for various purposes during the Nigerian 2015 presidential election, manifested in different media, including Nairaland Forum. Existing studies on 2015 presidential elections focused on campaign strategies, hate speech-related issues and socio-linguistic features, paying little attention to the use of Internet memes in projecting issues raised by the election. Therefore, this study investigates the deployment of Internet memes in the discourse on Nigeria’s 2015 presidential election on Nairaland Forum, to determine the contexts evoked. Kress and van Leeuwen’s Multimodal Theory and Mey’s Pragmatic Acts Theory was adopted. 12 out of 24 data samples were purposively selected for analysis. The contexts evoked includes the historical-religious context referring to history and religion as solutions to the leadership problems of the country. The war context depicted violence as a recurring feature in Nigeria’s election. While the educational context exposed the inadequacies of a candidate’s academic qualifications; the economic context exposed the country’s economy. The sporting context engaged showed the electoral process as a competition; whereas the socio-political context projected the electorate’s involvement and enthusiasm during and after the election. Verbal and non-verbal modes were identified to include text structures, colour and gaze. They form the basis for the communication and comprehension of the relevance of the Internet memes, hence, projecting how memes can be deployed to project the state of affairs of a nation during elections. Keywords: , , , ,
The Woman in Contemporary Nigerian Society and Bildungsroman as a Revolutionary Tool: A Study of Adimora-Ezeigbo’s Trafficked
Nigerian novelists have always expressed their views on various issues that affect the nation, from the colonial through the postcolonial era to the contemporary times, in varied novelistic styles. Bildungsroman appears to be the favourite baby of most third generation African women novelists. It has become a tool for (re)-creating the image and dream of a woman and a society. It is the same with Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, the author of Trafficked. The novel (re)-assesses the place of Nigerian (African) woman in the contemporary modern Nigerian society. Deploying Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, it is discovered that the novelist finds the novelistic tradition of Bildungsroman useful as a tool to explore and demand paradigm shift in the popular perception and treatment of women both in individual and larger social circles. The novelist’s vision is to ignite social, cultural, and economic revolution that is aimed at repositioning Nigerian women to be at par with their male counterparts. The developmental trajectory of Nneoma, the protagonist, justifies the novel as a Bildungsroman.
Investigating the Effect of Semantic Broadening and Narrowing on Ecological Terminologies
This study investigates 20 ecological terminologies to assess the impact of semantic broadening and narrowing, and analyzing how such changes shape systematic communication, public perception, and policy formulation. It adopts MAK Halliday’s systemic functional theory to analyze the secondary data using a qualitative analytical approach to examine the semantic change of broadening and narrowing in a few ecological terminologies. Through corpus analysis and discourse evaluation, we identify patterns of semantic shift in key ecological terms such as “environment”, “climate justice”, “biodegradables”, “green”, “biodiversity,” etc., and assess their implications for clarity and conceptual coherence in ecological research. The findings reveal that most familiar ecological terminologies undergo broadening compared to narrowing. While certain word formation processes, such as broadening, can undergo semantic narrowing, it risks ambiguity, whereas narrowing fosters precision but may restrict contextual relevance. The study underscores the need for balanced lexical evolution to maintain terminological rigor in ecological science while accommodating dynamic environmental discourse.
Beyond the Battlefield: Tracing War, Psychological Trauma, And Liminality in Shimmer Chinodya’s Harvest of Thorns
This article challenges the nationalistic war accounts of the Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle that focused primarily on the political conquest where individuals’ contribution and their psychological experiences were not given the recognition they deserved. Hence, a critical survey of Shimmer Chinodya’s Harvest of Thorns (1989) through the intersecting lenses of war, psychological trauma, and identity reconstruction investigates the novel’s depiction of Zimbabwe’s liberation fight and its aftermath. Going beyond the patriotic war accounts that centered on political victory, the novel interrogates the lives of ex-combatants, using the character of Benjamin, whose post-war survival is characterized by psychological breakdown and emotional disruption. This paper, however, contends that Chinodya criticizes the patriotic exaltation of war revealing the unseen wounds endured by individuals, particularly those whose identities have been broken by ideological revolution and battlefield brutalities. Relying on trauma theory of liminality, therefore, the study analyzes how Harvest of Thorns (1989) recounts the silent, ongoing combats that endure long after the hostility ends- those fought within the mind and soul of the traumatized victim. Finally, the article reveals that real liberation entails not only political sovereignty but also emotional healing of the ex-combatants and a reimagining of selfhood in post-conflict societies. Keywords: , , , ,
Humour Representation of Socio-Political Issues: Analysing Illocutionary Acts in some Nigerian Social Media Skits
The study examines the relationship between humour and illocutionary force in Nigerian social media skits, with particular attention to how digital comedy functions as a medium for socio-political commentary. Drawing on Searle’s (1969) Speech Act Theory, the study investigates how illocutionary acts are deployed in selected Nigerian skits to address pressing national concerns and stimulate critical reflection beyond entertainment. Adopting a qualitative approach, three purposively selected online skits – Fuel Scarcity Wahala, Letter to the Bigots, and Pressing Issues in the Senate, by Mr Macaroni and Lasisi were analysed. The videos, sourced from Facebook and Instagram, were transcribed, and twenty-nine utterances were examined. The analysis reveals four predominant categories of illocutionary acts – directives, assertives, expressives, and commissives, while declaratives were absent. The findings demonstrate that, despite their humorous framing, the skits perform significant socio-political functions by satirising issues such as governance, accountability, fuel scarcity, and electoral politics. Overall, the study shows that Nigerian skit makers strategically exploit illocutionary acts as pragmatic resources to initiate public discourse, promote social awareness, and interrogate power relations within the Nigerian socio-political context.
Analysis of Rhetorical Devices in President Tinubu’s 1st October, 2024 Independence Day Speech
This study examines the linguistic and rhetorical strategies employed by President Tinubu in his 1st October 2024 Independence Day Speech and how it has helped in shaping public perception and national identity. Using Fairclough's three-dimensional model of discourse analysis, textual analysis, discursive practice, and social practice, and Leech and Short's framework which focuses on analysing literary devices by examining how they are used to convey meaning, and understand speaker's intent, this research explores the power dynamics, ideological underpinnings, and persuasive elements used in the speech. The study also investigates how Tinubu's language choices reflect power dynamics, governance priorities, and efforts to foster national unity. The study uses a qualitative research approach and the methodology involves several steps to systematically analyse the speech and identify the rhetorical devices used by the president in his Independence Day speech. The findings of the study reveal that President Tinubu employed a range of rhetorical devices in his speech, including metaphors, personifications, hyperboles, parallelisms, similes, antitheses, anaphora among others. These rhetorical elements employed in the speech are used by the president to establish trust, inspire hope, outline policy priorities, and promote national unity.
‘For Her Price is Far above Rubies’: Exploring Motherhood As an Archetype in Yoruba and Hebrew Proverbs
Despite the centrality of motherhood in African and biblical worldviews, scholarly engagement with its symbolic and philosophical representations across cultures remains relatively underexplored. The study, therefore, interrogates the cultural constructions and ideological representations of motherhood in Hebrew and Yoruba proverbial traditions. Data were purposively selected from Yoruba proverbs and the biblical text of Proverbs 31:10-30. Anchored in Catherine Acholonu’s Motherist theory and employing qualitative content analysis, the study examines how both traditions encode the ethics, aesthetics, and social philosophy of motherhood. The findings reveal the universality of proverbial expressions in expressing the moral and socio-cultural values associated with mothers. Both the Hebrew and Yoruba traditions valorise the mother as a virtuous, industrious and self-sacrificing figure whose wisdom and resilience are central to familial survival and communal stability. The persona in Proverbs 31 finds her parallel in the archetypal African mother who embodies love, tolerance and cooperation in contrast to the confrontational ethos of radical feminism. Like her African counterpart, she achieves empowerment not through antagonism but through industriousness, moral fortitude and spiritual agency. The study concludes that Motherism offers a transformative paradigm that transcends gender polemics by proposing a humanistic, inclusive, and communitarian model of gender relations grounded in complementarity, mutual respect, and social harmony.
Oceanography and Creative Writing in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea
The ability to psychologically reflect on past and present experiences, subject the mind to critical thinking and express oneself for entertainment, education, purgatory and other purposes is crucial in creative writing. Observations, personal feelings and thoughts could be communicated through literary writings such as poetry, prose and drama. This study, therefore, examines oceanography and creative writing in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. It focuses on the heroic battle of a solitary fisherman with a giant Marlin and nature in the oceanic ecosystems. The study adopts Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic theory which focuses on the underlying factors that can spark up a writer’s imagination and creativity. The research is library based since the materials are not gathered through fieldwork but from critical and primary texts. The primary text chosen for this study was purposively selected by the researchers based on its thematic relevance to the objectives and subjected to qualitative (literary) analysis. Findings reveal the struggle of the protagonist against the Marlin and sharks, waves, current, climatic condition, and other elements in the oceanic ecosystems. Despite of the battle that lasted for three days in the marine world, Santiago is able to emerge victorious, arriving home with a giant Marlin of about eighteen feet tall. Ernest Hemingway has creatively expressed his observations in the ocean through fiction, thereby interfacing the inter-disciplines of oceanography and literature (literary writing). The study concludes that personal experiences and observations in the physical world can spark imagination and creativity as evident in Hemingway’s novella.
Meaning-Making in Political Cartoons on the 2023 Presidential Election in Nigeria: A Social Semiotic Interpretation
The paper analyses some selected political cartoons on the 2023 Presidential election in Nigeria. The objective is to unpack the multilayered meaning embedded in the political cartoons and to bring to the fore the societal ills and the short comings of our politicians. The data for the study comprises six (6) political cartoons selected purposively from the Nairaland Online Community, an internet forum for Nigerian political cartoons. The Visual Social Semiotics theory of Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 2006) is adopted as the theoretical standpoint for this study. Meaning - Making in the selected political cartoons are analysed in three layers namely: representational, interactive and compositional metafunctions. This in-depth analysis revealed among other things such recurring themes as corruption, insecurity, political rivalry and electoral fraud. The cartoons stand as powerful critiques of these societal foibles; they raise the awareness of the populace and help them to make informed choices and to intelligently participate actively in Nigeria’s political discourse
Discourse Markers of Sarcasm in the Marital Conflict Discourse of Nigerian Celebrities
Sarcasm is a communicative style with a complex interpretation. Thus, it presents a range of challenges in capturing its linguistic nuances, context dependencies and the latent meaning in marital disputes. The study examined the discourse markers of sarcasm in the marital conflict discourse of Nigerian celebrities. Since sarcasm conveys indirect meaning, this study helped language learners to infer and correctly interpret the meanings of sarcastic expressions in the context of marital conflicts. The study was guided by the following research questions: (1) What discourse features indicate sarcasm in marital conflicts of Nigerian celebrities? (2) How do these discourse features function to express sarcasm within a marital conflict context? (3) What is the relationship between sarcasm and conflict escalation in Nigerian celebrity marital disputes? Using virtual observation, the researcher deliberately selected representative samples of texts or narratives in which sarcasm was communicated in different ways from online platforms of five (5) Nigerian celebrities who had marital crises. Such platforms include Facebook, blogs, Instagram, Twitter and so on. Moreover, newspaper headlines that feature celebrity news (direct interviews with such celebrities), such as Vanguard, Daily Post, Daily Trust, Premium Times and so on, were consulted. The collated data was given a qualitative and descriptive analysis using J.R. Searle’s Speech Act Theory. The findings revealed that Nigerian celebrities use various discourse features, such as tone-meaning incongruity, quotation marks, footing shift, exaggerated virtue, religious irony, capitalisation for emphasis, hyperbole, vagueness, undermining clichés, false empathy/flattery, understatement, moralising deflection, child framing, detached tone, mock rhetorical questions, audience inference, religious register, indirect reference, mismatch between tone and content etc, to indicate sarcasm during marital conflicts. It is recommended that the study be replicated in similar contexts to validate the findings.
Impoliteness Strategies in Medical Staff-Patients Encounter in Zamfara State Public Health Facilities
This article focuses on the impoliteness strategies by medical staff of selected public health facilities in Zamfara state. The study interprets and analyses the excerpts of discourse strategies of some medical staff and patients using Culpeper’s (2005) model of impoliteness theory. The data collection methods employed were participant observation and paper recordings. Data were collected from twelve discourse encounters of medical staff and patients from nine (9) public health facilities across the three senatorial zones in the state. Three hospitals were selected from each zone. The data consists of eye-witness events involving the medical staff and patients in the selected health facilities. This research reveals that the language used by some medical staff portrays impoliteness behaviour at varying degrees. The study equally shows that staff of health facilities in the cities mostly employ negative impoliteness strategies while semi-urban hospital staff employ sarcasm or mock politeness in their language use to the patients. The bald on-record impoliteness strategy is employed by health personnel in the rural hospitals while the other impolite strategies are rarely used. Their responses to the patients show an attack on the patients’ face. The article recommends that medical staff shall learn to be polite by using expressions that show sympathy in their talk with the patients who attend public hospitals.
Language Anxiety, Communication Apprehension and Self-Concepts as Determinants of Senior Secondary School Students’ Verbal Communication Skills in Ibadan Nigeria
This study explores the interplay of language anxiety, communication apprehension, and self-concept as determinants of verbal communication skills among senior secondary school students in Ibadan, Nigeria. Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis and Input or Monitor Model provided the framework, while the study adopted the correlational survey design. Data were collected from 179 Senior Secondary School 2 students across four randomly selected schools. Instruments included the English Language Anxiety Scale ELCAS, Communication Apprehension Questionnaire CAQ, Verbal Communication Rating Scale VCRS, and Learners Self-Concept Questionnaire LSCQ. The findings revealed high levels of language anxiety and communication apprehension, alongside strong self-concept among participants. However, only language anxiety demonstrated a significant negative relationship with verbal communication achievement, while communication apprehension and self-concept did not significantly predict performance. These results challenge prevailing assumptions about the cumulative impact of psychological factors on language proficiency and underscore the complex nature of verbal communication challenges in this context. The study recommends interventions that lower language anxiety, improve students’ self-awareness and confidence, and blend psychological, pedagogical, and environmental strategies to reduce language anxiety, develop more accurate self-assessment tools, and further qualitative and longitudinal research to understand better the evolving dynamics of psychological factors and communication skills among Nigerian students.
Moral Depravity: A Study of Yejide Kilanko’s Daughters Who Walk This Path
This study examines the theme of moral depravity in Yejide Kilanko’s Daughters Who Walk This Path, a Nigerian novel that addresses issues of silence, betrayal, and patriarchal complicity in the perpetuation of sexual abuse. The central objective is to critically assess how Kilanko unveils moral corruption through the framework of African feminist theory. Building on the insights of African feminist thinkers such as Molara Ogundipe, Helen Chukwuma, Flora Nwapa, and Obioma Nnaemeka, the study applies feminist literary analysis to examine the roles of patriarchy, cultural taboos, and communal denial in enabling abuse. The analysis demonstrates that Kilanko depicts moral depravity not simply as individual moral failure but as a structural crisis rooted in familial, cultural, and communal systems. Morayo’s story as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse underscores the intersections of trauma, secrecy, and female resilience. The study contends that Daughters Who Walk This Path functions as both a searing critique of patriarchal oppression and a feminist vision that emphasizes the redemptive power of women’s voices, self-definition, and solidarity in advancing healing, justice, and cultural transformation.
Deviance in Collocation and Colligation Constraints in Nigerian Newspaper Editorials: A Lexical Priming Analysis
Newspaper editorials occupy a pivotal position as authoritative texts that inform, persuade, and model linguistic standards. In Nigeria, however, editorial writing has been found to occasionally reflect inconsistencies in word combinations and syntactic structures. This has raised a lot of questions about their linguistic integrity. This study, therefore, x-rays the deviants in collocation and colligation constraints in Nigerian newspaper editorials. The study employs Michael Hoey’s Lexical Priming Theory to explain how writers’ lexical and structural choices are shaped by prior linguistic exposure and how deviations from established priming manifest in professional discourse.Qualitative research design is adopted. Samples are purposively chosen from Punch and Vanguard newspapers published between January and May 2025. The analysis focused on verb + noun and verb + preposition collocations, alongside syntactic constructions that breached colligational norms. Findings reveal that Nigerian newspaper editorials frequently deviate from collocation and colligation norms. This undermines clarity, impede logical flow, distort persuasive intent, and compromise editorial credibility. These deviations are attributed to mother-tongue interference, limited exposure to standard linguistic input, overreliance on technical lexis, and unconscious lexical priming. These lapses continue to infest non-standard language practices within academic and professional domains. Hence, this study advocates for enhanced editorial training, deliberate exposure to standard English usage, and heightened linguistic awareness to safeguard communicative precision, strengthen editorial credibility and enrich Nigerian newspapers’ contribution to scholarly and national discourse.