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Item Problematising migration: news discourses in Nigerian newspaper(English Scholars' Association of Nigeria (ESAN), 2025) Osisanwo, A.; Oluwayemi, V.This paper examines how migration is problematised in Nigerian newspapers by identifying and discussing discursive issues and linguistic devices deployed in news discourses, drawing its data from five Nigerian newspapers. Employing theoretical insights from critical discourse analysis, Nigerian news discourses problematise migration through four discursive issues of poverty, unemployment, security and immigration. The discursive issues provide the basis for Western-driven migration and uncover migrants’ experiences in their countries of destination. The paper reveals that Nigerian newspapers give prominence to negative news reportage of migration to discourage potential migrants from irregular migration while resisting the anti-immigration policies of powerful countries.Item Us and them(John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2026) Osisanwo, A.; Oji, R.K.#EndSARS protest started publicly on October 8, 2020, with teeming Nigerian youths moving from one location to the other to press home their demands, protesting police brutality among others. The protesters, especially those in Lagos, chose the Lekki Toll Gate as their protest base. The protest protracted across the country until October 20, 2020, when there were alleged shootings at the Lekki location by men in uniform believed to be from the Nigerian army. The protest and the shooting generated controversies, with the international community lending their voice to condemn the act. Existing studies on protests in Nigeria have examined #fuel fees must fall, Biafra protest, and so forth. Yet, studies have not adequately examined the #EndSARS-induced Lekki shooting. Its critical examination can confirm or refute the existing claims on protest discourse. This study, therefore, examines the newspaper narratives on the October 20 #EndSARS shooting at Lekki Toll Gate, to identify the deployed discourse issues, the pragmatic acts, identities and ideological polarisations in the discourses. Using aspects of van Dijk's model of critical discourse analysis, Mey's pragmatics acts and Voyant Tools, related narratives from two widely read Nigerian newspapers: Punch and Leadership revealed two broad ideological polarisations (US vs THEM) and four sub-categorisations of ideological discourse structure: actor description, argument, activity and goal description, and discourse strategies, and different pragmatic acts.Item "Silence is the best answer for a bully”: an exploration of humour techniques in selected Nigerian newspaper political cartoons(De Gruyter Brill, 2024) Osisanwo, A.; Atoloye, L.Newspaper political cartoons, known for their satirical nature, employ semiotic and linguistic techniques to comment on or criticise political leaders and events humorously. While previous studies on Nigerian newspaper political cartoons have focused on ideological issues and discourse frames, little attention has been given to the linguistic investigation of semiotic humour techniques in these cartoons. This study, therefore, investigates these humour techniques, utilising Salvatore Attardo and Victor Raskin’s General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) as the framework within a descriptive design. Three newspapers - Punch, The Guardian, and Daily Trust - were purposively selected for their regular publication of cartoons, criticising Nigeria’s politics. Eleven political cartoons were purposively selected for their semiotic and humorous depictions of Nigeria’s politics, and subjected to linguistic analysis. Six semiotic humour techniques were identified in the cartoons: exaggeration, humorous metaphor, distortion of formulaic expressions, neologism, innovative collocation, and sarcasm. These techniques were employed to satirise three governance issues in Nigeria - misgovernance, corruption and insecurity.Item "They are sexual objects": construction of female rape victims in selected Nigerian newspapers(Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, 2022) Osisanwo, A.; Ojo, R.Following the assumption that there is a particular way newspapers often use language to represent female rape victims (FRVs) and the insufficiency of existing studies on the linguistic representation of FRVs in Nigerian newspapers, this study critically discusses the linguistic and discursive tools that are deployed by selected Nigerian newspapers to represent FRVs in their reports. Aspects of Halliday’s transitivity system and Lazar’s notion of feminist critical discourse analysis served as framework. The framework was complemented with the use of Voyant tools to determine the preponderance of word choice in news reports. Rape reports published between January, 2020 and December, 2020 by The Punch, The Guardian, Vanguard and Daily Trust were purposively retrieved and constituted the data for this study. Data engagement revealed that FRVs were imbued with five representations: patriarchal preys, object of sexual gratification, anonymized and pseudonymized victims, objects of pity and victims of dual jeopardy. The social implications of these representations aligned with patriarchal practices such as androcentrism, incest, mental abuse and sexual assault while the gender biases implicated in the representation included the projection of female as inferior, powerless and emotional beings.Item Discourse issues in Nigerian media reportage of Pro-Biafra protests in selected newspapers(Department of Linguistics, African Languages, and Communication Arts, Lagos State University (LASU), 2021) Osisanwo, A.; Iyoha, O.This study examines the discourse issues in the reportage of the 2015 and 2016 pro-Biafra protests in selected Nigerian newspapers. Previous studies on the reportage of protest have examined the representational and discursive strategies as well as the ideological inclinations in news reports, leaving the discourse issues in the protest understudied. The study therefore examines the discourse issues represented in the 2015 and 2016 pro-Biafra protest presented in selected Nigerian newspapers. Data for the study were news reports purposively drawn from four widely circulated Nigerian national dailies, The Punch, The Nation, The Sun and Vanguard newspapers which allocate sufficient space to the coverage of the protests. The period covered was between 2015 and 2016, a period when the protests were prominently reported in the country. Ruth Wodak’s Discourse Historical approach to Critical Discourse Analysis and M.A.K Halliday’s Transitivity model of Systemic Functional Linguistics served as the theoretical framework of the study. The data were subjected to critical discourse analysis. The discourse issues identified include marginalisation of the Igbo, worsening economic situation, human rights abuse, injustice, corruption and unemploymentItem Tracking ideology in Nigerian newspaper representation of the 2015 and 2016 pro-Biafra protests(English Scholars’Association of Nigeria (ESAN), 2021) Osisanwo, A.; Iyoha, O.This study examines the ideological inclinations of the discourse surrounding the 2015 and 2016 Biaffa protests as represented in selected Nigerian newspapers. Data for the study were news reports purposively selected from four widely circulated Nigerian national dailies: The Punch, The Nation, The Sun and Vanguard newspapers, which reported the protests. The period covered was between 2015 and 2016, a period when the protests were prominently reported in the country. Ruth Wodak's Discourse Historical approach to Critical Discourse Analysis and M.A.K Halliday's Transitivity model of Systemic Functional Linguistics served as the theoretical framework of the study. The data were subjected to critical discourse analysis. Findings reveal six underlying ideologies in the representation of the protests; namely separatist, pacifist, liberatiomst, dissentist, schist and repressionist.Item ‘We are not terrorist, we are freedom fighters’: Discourse representation of the pro-Biafra protest in selected Nigerian newspapers(Sage Publications, 2020) Osisanwo, A.; Iyoha, O.The recent pro-Biafra protest across Nigeria has become an important topic in the news media where it has been constructed in different ways. Existing studies on media construction of protest have examined framing, speech acts and rhetorical strategies. However, adequate attention has not been given to the discursive representation of the 2015 and 2016 pro-Biafra protest. This study therefore examined the discourse strategies and the ideological inclinations of news reports on the 2015 and 2016 Biafra protest. Van Leeuwen’s representation of social actors and Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (SFL) serve as the theoretical underpinning of the study. Data were purposively drawn from four widely read and circulated Nigerian newspapers, The Punch, The Sun, The Vanguard and The Nation which allocate sufficient space to the coverage of the protests. The period covered was between 2015 and 2016, a period where the protest was most intense in the country. Three representational strategies which include ‘protesters as freedom fighters’, ‘protesters as economic saboteurs’ and ‘protesters as lawabiding citizens’ were discovered in the study. Ten strategies in van Leeuwen’s representation of social actors – passivisation, nomination, association, disassociation, exclusion, aggregation, functionalisation, differentiation, indetermination, collectivisation – were indexed in the representational strategies. These representations were also explicated by four processes which include material, verbal, relational and behavioural. The pro-Biafra protesters were equally represented as violent and unruly whereas the protesters construe themselves as lawabiding citizens and freedom fighters as against being treated as terrorists.