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Item Ideology and Discourse Strategies in Selected Radio News of Osun State Broadcasting Corporation, Nigeria(2012) Ajewole-Orimogunje, C. O.Previous studies on news in electronic media in Nigeria have mostly concentrated on linguistic and stylistic features with little attention on discourse strategies and underlying ideological factors considered to be significant in the construction and full understanding of radio news. There is need for more attention to be paid to ideologies and discourse strategies in media discourse as they enhance the comprehension of radio news. This study, therefore, investigated the discourse strategies and political ideologies in selected radio news of Osun State Broadcasting Corporation, (OSBC), with a view to revealing the interaction between the strategies and ideologies. The OSBC was selected for its unique engagements with political ideologies. The study was carried out within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) which links the text with underlying power relations and ideologies, using Wodak‟s sociohistorical and van Dijk‟s socio-cognitive models. These are complemented with Halliday‟s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) for its emphasis on the form/function relationship in language use. A total of 1000 written news reports from the OSBC were collected between April 2007 and November 2010, out of which 250 (25%) were purposively sampled, based on their political contents. The period was selected because of the political tension that characterized the election situation in the State during the regime of Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola. A content analysis of the news was carried out using the tools of SFG and CDA. Three major political ideologies namely, historicist, humanitarian, and welfarist, were observed to influence the deployment of specific discourse strategies in the construction of political news in the OSBC radio during the regime of Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola. Government was projected as welfarist and humanitarian in its political agenda. Historicist ideology was characterised by the use of temporality and historical comparison of events. The linguistic tool of lexicalisation was used to foreground the humanitarian and welfarist ideologies of the government. The historicist ideology was characterised by the use of transitive clauses with a high degree of transitivity which comprised spatio-temporal adverbials and verbal choices for detailed material, mental and relational processes representing the actions and activities of prominent political actors in the news events. For humanitarian and welfarist ideologies, the strategies utilised were blame transfer, source avoidance, positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation, foregrounding of figures and statistics, manipulation, and authoritarianism. Blame transfer exonerated the political actors from the ills of the society and shifted the blame on the opponents. Events that portrayed the ruling political party positively and the opposition negatively were emphasized and given prominence while those that portrayed the ruling party negatively and the opponents positively were defocussed. There is a close interaction between political ideology and the discourse strategies used to project it in OSBC radio news texts. This interaction throws useful insights into the ideational process that is crucial in the construction of radio news. Future studies should undertake an analysis of the link between ideology and television news.Item 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 negotiatedItem Discourse Strategies and the Evocation of Solidarity in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Novels(2017) Gajir, T. H.Solidarity within social groups is a prominent thematic preoccupation in contemporary African literary works. Previous studies on Adichie’s three novels: Purple Hibiscus (PH), Half of a Yellow Sun (HOAYS) and AMERiCANAH (AH), have examined textual aspects such as language, context, style, and themes with little attention on discourse strategies as they evoke social solidarity in the novels. This study, therefore, examined discourse strategies in relation to how they evoked social solidarity and textual cohesion with a view to deepening the understanding of the texts. The study adopted M.A.K. Halliday’s model of Systemic Functional Linguistics as framework, complemented with Fairclough’s model of Critical Discourse Analysis and Durkheim’s concept of solidarity. The data consisted of 152 extracts from the three novels: 42 from PH, 61 from HOAYS and 49 from AH. These extracts, selected on the basis of their relevance to the evocation of social solidarity and textual cohesion, were subjected to discourse analysis. Discourse strategies such as referential, perspectivation, intensification and mitigation were the major tools for the construction of social solidarity. The referential strategy, a process of constructing and representing social actors by membership categorisation, was exhibited in the form of nominal groups like ‘‘my brother’’(PH),‘‘our family’’(PH),‘‘my man’’(HOAYS), ‘‘Northerners’’(HOAYS),‘‘Black British’’(AH), ‘‘Non-American Blacks’’(AH), and was used to construct characters’ social identities, with the aim of specifying the nature of their social solidarity. Perspectivation, in terms of the narrative point of view, was realised in the form of personal pronouns (I/we/us/they/them) which were used to articulate characters’ perspectives and commitment to social solidarity. Intensification, which implies explicit expressions of qualifying/modifying the epistemic status of propositions, was realised in the use of modal auxiliary ‘‘will’’. For example, ‘‘we will take care of the baby; we will protect him’’ (PH). Similarly, the expression ‘‘Try and make friends with our African American brothers and sisters in a spirit of true pan- Africanism’’ (AH) was a form of explicit intensification, and signified cross-national solidarity. Mitigation, an implicit reference to social solidarity, was realised in expressions like ‘‘There’s no American nonsense in that house’’ (AH) which showed preference for African over American culture. While these discourse strategies enhance mostly familial and kinship solidarities in PH and HOAYS, cross-national solidarity was realised in AH. Expressions with lexical sense relations such as hyponymy (‘‘Kano/North’’ in HOAYS), and meronymy (‘‘black locals/Black Americans’’ in AH), as well as reiteration and collocation amplified social solidarity and enhanced lexical cohesion in Adichie’s texts. In most cases the use of conjunctions, substitutions, and elliptical structures intensified communication of intentions that augmented social solidarity and reinforced grammatical cohesion. Discourse strategies evoked aspects of social solidarity such as collectivism, cooperation, group loyalty and textual cohesion in Adichie’s novels. These provide insights into meaningful and profound interpretations of Adichie’s works.