Scholarly Works

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End date: 2024Subject: search.filters.subject.Ideology

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    LINGUISTIC TAGGING AND IDEOLOGY IN SELECTED ENGLISH-MEDIUM NIGERIAN AND CAMEROONIAN NEWSPAPER REPORTS ON THE BAKASSI PENINSULA BORDER CONFLICT
    (2013-04) IGWEBUIKE, Ebuka Elias
    Linguistic tagging, the labelling of people and their actions with particular socio-politically-grounded values, is an ideological denominator that plays a significant role in media framing of conflict. Despite this significance, existing studies on the Nigeria-Cameroon Bakassi Peninsula border conflict, which had concentrated on the historical, political, legal and sociolinguistic dimensions, largely neglected an exploration of the dynamics of linguistic tagging. Therefore, this study investigated the linguistic tagging of people and their actions, and the underlying social, political and economic ideologies in the Nigerian and Cameroonian newspaper reports on the Bakassi Peninsula border conflict, with a view to uncovering the interactions between the tagging and the ideologies. The theoretical framework was a synthesis of insights from van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model of Critical Discourse Analysis, Halliday’s Systemic Linguistics and the theory of lexical decomposition. Data were collected from three Nigerian newspapers (The Guardian, The Punch and The Nigerian Chronicle) and three Cameroonian newspapers (The Cameroon Tribune, The Post and Eden), published in English between August 2006 and August 2010. These newspapers were purposively selected on the basis of their wide virtual and non-virtual publicity on the conflict. Out of a total of 650 news reports, 164 (87 Nigerian and 77 Cameroonian news reports) were purposively selected and subjected to content, linguistic and descriptive statistical analyses. Five conflict-related themes, namely, terrorism, resistance, dispossession, suffering and economy, which correlated with different forms of linguistic tagging, were identified. Terrorism took lexical tags of violence, and resistance, the tags of militancy. Dispossession and suffering took the tags of dislocation, and economy, the tags of ownership. These tags featured emotive and evaluative adjectives and intensifying adverbs. The themes of terrorism and resistance were tagged by transitive clauses of action, while dispossession and suffering were represented by metaphors UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN LIBRARY xv and verbs signifying mental conditions. Economic interests in the Peninsula were represented positively while violence, militancy and dislocation evoked negative connotations. Ostensibly to attract international support, Cameroonian newspaper reports emphasised tags of violence (46.0%), militancy (37.0%), ownership (14.0%) and dislocation (3.0%) while the Nigerian ones devoted more attention to tags of dislocation (53.0%), ownership (36.0%), militancy (9.0%) and violence (2.0%). Ideologically, the tags were motivated by specific values. The economic value of consumerism motivated the tagging of ownership in both nations’ newspapers. However, in the Nigerian reports, the values of social justice and altruism mediated the tagging of dislocation while in the Cameroonian reports, the political ideals of pacifism and patriotism triggered violence and militancy tags. Cameroonian reports had a larger concentration of agentless passives (76.0%) than Nigerian ones (24.0%) to obscure media bias. Nominalisations were deployed in the Nigerian reports (54.0%) and the Cameroonian ones (46.0%) to play down media involvement. There is a dynamic interaction between socio-political and economic ideologies and linguistic tagging in the newspaper reports on the Bakassi Peninsula border conflict. This interaction projected respectively social concerns and political rights and peace in Nigerian and Cameroonian reports. Thus, an awareness of this interaction is essential to the understanding of media reports on border conflicts. Key words: Linguistic tagging, Newspaper reports, Ideology, Bakassi Peninsula conflict Word count: 498
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    Language, Ideology and Power Relations in Nigerian Television Talk Shows
    (2015) Oji, R. K.
    Television talk shows (TTSs) are forms of talk-in interactive programmes where hosts and participants employ different discourse strategies, laden with latent ideologies – ideas that reflect their beliefs and interests – and power relations – the controlling of contributions by more powerful participants. Previous studies on Nigerian TTSs described their discourse strategies using conversation analysis, without adequate emphasis on their ideological basis and linguistic features. This study, therefore, examined the ideologies and forms of power relations in Nigerian TTSs in order to elicit their linguistic and paralinguistic cues. The theoretical framework combined van Dijk‟s, Fauconnier and Turner‟s approaches to Critical Discourse Analysis and complemented them with Brown and Levinson‟s Politeness Principle and Poyatos‟ approach to non-verbal communication. The following public-owned stations – Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and Lagos Television (LTV); and private-owned stations – Silverbird Television (STV) and Africa Independent Television (AIT) were purposively selected for having more talk show content. Eight talk shows: „Today on STV‟ and „Head to Head‟ (STV); „Focus Nigeria‟ and „Kakaaki‟ (AIT); „Daytime Talk‟ and „Morning Desk‟ (LTV); „Good Morning Nigeria‟ and „Reflections‟ (NTA); and three episodes of each, produced between 2012 and 2014, were purposively selected for possessing linguistic categories that accounted for ideologies and power relations. Data were subjected to critical discourse analysis. The ideological underpinnings of the selected Nigerian TTSs vary, as revealed in the accompanying quoted expressions. NTA‟s talk shows employed pro-government and social-democratic ideologies: „„government has insurgency in control‟‟ and “federal government is committed to creating a better Nigeria”. LTV‟s talk shows employed libertarian ideologies aligned to the state party and in opposition to NTA: “federal government is a failure” and “government is the political Boko Haram”. STV‟s talk shows expressed more social-democratic ideologies – “striking unions are insensitive” and “protesters against government are charlatans”; while AITs‟ expressed more liberal ideologies – “federal government deserves media support in the fight against Boko Haram” – both talk shows in favour of federal government. Power relations were evident in domination of turns and topics, guffawing satirical laughter and aggressive portrayal of ideologies in STV shows through shouting and fuming by participants and hosts‟ deployment of face threatening acts. NTA hosts ignored salient points against the station‟s ideologies and interrupted participants‟ turn to avoid revealing mitigating information. However, AIT and LTV talk shows were more cooperative. In the selected talk shows, hosts and participants employed linguistic cues such as relational modality to express commitment to the truth; indirect quotations and presuppositions to expose their non-neutral stance; and „pretentious‟ positive other-presentation and negative self-presentation to express ideologies. The paralinguistic cues observed were eye contacts by hosts and participants to reveal states of disbelief; lack of it to show psychological distance; and low pitch in voice to signal hesitation and disappointment. The selected Nigerian television talk shows are replete with leftist and conservative ideologies expressed by hosts and participants in an atmosphere of dominating and cooperative power relations. The talk shows rely heavily on linguistic and paralinguistic cues that promote their latent ideologies and determine how power relations are negotiated
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    Linguistic Tagging and Ideology in Selected Englishmedium Nigerian and Cameroonian Newspaper Reports on the Bakassi Peninsula Border Conflict
    (2013) Igwebuike, E. E.
    Linguistic tagging, the labelling of people and their actions with particular sociopolitically- grounded values, is an ideological denominator that plays a significant role in media framing of conflict. Despite this significance, existing studies on the Nigeria-Cameroon Bakassi Peninsula border conflict, which had concentrated on the historical, political, legal and sociolinguistic dimensions, largely neglected an exploration of the dynamics of linguistic tagging. Therefore, this study investigated the linguistic tagging of people and their actions, and the underlying social, political and economic ideologies in the Nigerian and Cameroonian newspaper reports on the Bakassi Peninsula border conflict, with a view to uncovering the interactions between the tagging and the ideologies. The theoretical framework was a synthesis of insights from van Dijk’s sociocognitive model of Critical Discourse Analysis, Halliday’s Systemic Linguistics and the theory of lexical decomposition. Data were collected from three Nigerian newspapers (The Guardian, The Punch and The Nigerian Chronicle) and three Cameroonian newspapers (The Cameroon Tribune, The Post and Eden), published in English between August 2006 and August 2010. These newspapers were purposively selected on the basis of their wide virtual and non-virtual publicity on the conflict. Out of a total of 650 news reports, 164 (87 Nigerian and 77 Cameroonian news reports) were purposively selected and subjected to content, linguistic and descriptive statistical analyses. Five conflict-related themes, namely, terrorism, resistance, dispossession, suffering and economy, which correlated with different forms of linguistic tagging, were identified. Terrorism took lexical tags of violence, and resistance, the tags of militancy. Dispossession and suffering took the tags of dislocation, and economy, the tags of ownership. These tags featured emotive and evaluative adjectives and intensifying adverbs. The themes of terrorism and resistance were tagged by transitive clauses of action, while dispossession and suffering were represented by metaphors and verbs signifying mental conditions. Economic interests in the Peninsula were represented positively while violence, militancy and dislocation evoked negative connotations. Ostensibly to attract international support, Cameroonian newspaper reports emphasised tags of violence (46.0%), militancy (37.0%), ownership (14.0%) and dislocation (3.0%) while the Nigerian ones devoted more attention to tags of dislocation (53.0%), ownership (36.0%), militancy (9.0%) and violence (2.0%). Ideologically, the tags were motivated by specific values. The economic value of consumerism motivated the tagging of ownership in both nations’ newspapers. However, in the Nigerian reports, the values of social justice and altruism mediated the tagging of dislocation while in the Cameroonian reports, the political ideals of pacifism and patriotism triggered violence and militancy tags. Cameroonian reports had a larger concentration of agentless passives (76.0%) than Nigerian ones (24.0%) to obscure media bias. Nominalisations were deployed in the Nigerian reports (54.0%) and the Cameroonian ones (46.0%) to play down media involvement. There is a dynamic interaction between socio-political and economic ideologies and linguistic tagging in the newspaper reports on the Bakassi Peninsula border conflict. This interaction projected respectively social concerns and political rights and peace in Nigerian and Cameroonian reports. Thus, an awareness of this interaction is essential to the understanding of media reports on border conflicts.