Scholarly Works
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Item Interaction Structure and Pragmatic Features in the 2008 National Quasi-Judicial Public Hearing on the Federal Capital Territory Administration in Nigeria(2012) Unuabonah, F. O.Studies on quasi-judicial public hearings have focused on rhetorical, sociolinguistic and critical discourse aspects of the hearings, but have not given attention to the discourse structure and participant goals during the hearings. Thus, this study examined language use and interaction in the 2008 quasi-judicial public hearing, conducted by a hearing panel constituted by the Senate on the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) administration in Nigeria. This was done with a view to revealing the interactional formats and pragmatic roles of language in the hearing and comparing the formats with those of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearing study in South Africa, the only quasi-judicial public hearing yet analysed in Africa. Generic Structure Potential and pragmatic theories provided the theoretical framework for the study because they deal with interactional structures and functions of language in context. Forty purposively sampled video recordings of the hearing were obtained from the African Independent Television stations in Abuja and Lagos. These were complemented with structured interviews with the complainants, newspaper reports, written submissions and the final report of the panel. The data were subjected to content analysis. Ten discourse macrostructural elements characterised the generic structure of the public hearing. These were catalogued as: AO ^ A^ IP ^ [P(Pr)] ^ {I ^ IC}n ^ (PD) ^ (Pr) ^Ad ^ (F) Affirmation Order, Affirmation, Invitation of Perspectives, Presentation, Interrogation, Interrogation Compliance and Admission were obligatory while Prayer Demand, Prayer and Finis were optional. Interrogation and Interrogation Compliance were iterative at equal degrees. Prayer was either a part of Presentation or a pre-Admission occurrence. These interaction structure elements were variously characterised by discourse and pragmatic features. Locutions in the hearing featured jargon, plain words, fixed and free collocations; affixation, compounding, abbronymy and clipping; antonyms and synonyms; and declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives. Contextual beliefs were based on shared knowledge of public hearing procedures, shared knowledge of landed property law, shared knowledge of government involvement and shared knowledge of Abuja metropolis. Thirteen pragmatic acts characterised the language: ordering, swearing, appreciating, informing, complaining, defending, advising, commenting, denying, questioning, promising, requesting and admitting. Five macrostructures in the FCT hearing were similar to those of the TRC hearing, namely, Affirmation Order/introduction, Invitation of Perspectives/elicitation, Presentation/narrative, Interrogation/questions and Finis/concluding remarks. Affirmation, Interrogation Compliance, Prayer Demand, Prayer and Admission were not identified in the latter. The TRC study, using a narrative approach, did not give any attention to generic structure and pragmatic functions, which constituted major findings on the FCT hearing. Generic Structural elements and pragmatic properties provide useful insights into the discourse and procedure of the 2008 FCT hearing. Unlike the study on the FCT which captures the interactional specifics of the hearing, the structures identified in the TRC study were broad and did not cover details of the interaction. Thus, in-depth comparative linguistic studies of quasi-judicial public hearings in Nigeria and other African countries are required to have a clearer understanding of the structure and pragmatic constraints in the hearings.Item Sexual Discourse Among Students in Selected Tertiary Institutions in Lagos State, Nigeria(2012) Oni, O. O.Sexual discourse refers to sex-related verbal activities that many Nigerian tertiary institution students engage in. Existing studies have addressed sexual discourse from socio-cultural, sociolinguistic and critical linguistic perspectives but have not adequately studied its pragmatic import, especially in relation to encounters centering on sexual intercourse. This study, therefore, investigates the discourse forms, contextual features, pragmatic functions, and attitudes to and perception of the language of sex among students of tertiary institutions in Lagos State, Nigeria. This is with a view to identifying the context-determined roles of language in and the impact of gender and religion on the students‟ sexual discourse. The study adopted aspects of conceptual metaphor, together with pragmemic and contextual beliefs theories. Forty purposive tape recordings of students‟ conversations were made, and copies of a questionnaire were administered to 760 students in eight tertiary institutions in Lagos State, selected on stratified and purposive bases: two universities, three polytechnics and three colleges of education. Four hundred structured interviews were conducted with 50 students in each of the institutions, and eight focus-group discussions were held with six students each in the institutions. Participant observation was randomly undertaken on the students‟ interactions. While the qualitative data were subjected to content-analysis, Pearson and student t-test were used to test the hypotheses formulated at 0.01 and 0.05 levels of significance. Two discourse forms characterise the encounters: plain euphemisms and metaphors. Plain euphemisms bifurcate into sound indicative and sense indicative euphemisms; metaphors trifurcate into euphemistic, dysphemistic and slangy metaphors. Euphemistic metaphors are derived from five source domains: food/fruit, security, mysticism, leisure/sport and everyday language; dysphemistic metaphors from the army, carpentry, food/meat and everyday language; and slangy metaphors from sports, music, Internet and Nigerian cultures. Three main contextual features are observed: Shared Cultural Knowledge (SCK), Shared Situational Knowledge (SSK) and Shared Experiential Knowledge (SEK). SCK and SSK are characterised by the use of slangy words, metaphors and indexicals, and SEK by attitudinal markers, and linguistic and cognitive mappings. There are three practs in the interactions: amusing, informing, and criticising. Six allopracts are identified: three for criticizing; two for informing; and one for amusing. The quantitative analysis indicates that there is a significant relationship between students‟ attitudes to and their perception of sexual discourse(r = .443, P<.01); that a significant difference exists in the attitude of male and female students to sexual discourse ( t = 3.71 P<0.5); and that male and female students‟ perception of sexual discourse differ (t = 2.459, P < .05). Although there is a significant difference in the attitude of Muslim and Christian students to sexual discourse ( t = 2.284, P<.05), there is no significant difference in their perception of sexual discourse . Lagos State tertiary institution students deploy creative linguistic forms with context-sensitive functions in their sexual discourse; attitude, perception, gender and religion play important roles in the discourse. Thus, understanding the language of sex and associated socio-emotional variables among the students requires background knowledge of the social, linguistic and interactional resources the students draw upon in their sexual discourse