Discursive Practice and the Nigerian Identity in Personal Emails

As communication by the electronic mail spreads and becomes increasingly common, more and more people are taking the advantage of its flexibility and simplicity for communicating social identity and cultural matters. This chapter, focuses on how Nigerian users of the electronic mails, apply the medium for expressing their identity through discursive means. Data comprises 150 personal emails written and sent between 2002 and 2009 in Lagos and Ota regions of Nigeria by individual email writers, comprising youths and adults from a university community and the Nigerian civil service. Applying socio-linguistic approach and computer-mediated discourse analysis, the study shows that the most common discursive means of expressing the Nigerian identity are greeting forms and modes of address; religious discursive practices and assertions of native personal names. The data also show evidences of Nigerian English in the email messages

News Headlines as Pragmatic Strategy in Nigerian Press Discourse

This paper shows that headlines are discourse units that are analyzable as independent texts. They are functional parts of news stories that are pragmatically encoded to underscore some special kinds of social meaning other than mere encapsulation of the body of news stories. As pragmatically relevant discourse type, headlines and their overlines are interpreted in terms of their relationship to information in the social context. Previous studies on the language of the mass media identified some stylistic features of news reporting that are ideologically influenced by some peculiar perceptions or bias. (Adesanoye, 1974; Freeborn et al, 1986; Bell 1991). The present study applies the Speech act theory to show that headlines do indeed perform acts in the way they attempt to mediate the Nigerian socio-political experiences. News headlines are viewed as performing illocutionary functions as socially oriented discourse and are a critical strategy employed by journalists to denounce social malaise. Key words: headlines, overlines, acts, illocutionary, crise

SMS Text-Messaging and the Nigerian Christian Context: Constructing Values and Sentiments

The Global System of Mobile Communications (GSM) in Nigeria brought with it a variety of English that is situationally distinct and context sensitive. Thus SMS text-messages are viewed as discourses that presuppose speech events among interlocutors that share a common social behaviour and cultural values. This study shows the extent to which test-messaging constructs Christian values, belief systems and sentiments in Nigeria. Fifty-three (53) text samples collected in Lagos and Ota areas of Southwest Nigeria between 2005 and 2007 are analysed within the framework of computer-mediated discourse analysis (Herring 2001). Result shows that with its peculiar orthographic convention and style, text-messaging has become popular among Christian adherents not just because it is short, cheap and fast but that it is individualistic and fits well into a context where respect for individuals is emphasized. Analysis also shows that SMS text-messaging is used to disseminate messages associated with faith-based pronouncements, prayer and well-wishing, admonition and assurance, appreciation and praise, seasons greetings and general information/announcements. These functions tend to promote love and cooperation among church members. Key words: SMS-text messages, Christian, Discourse Introduction Th

Pakistan and the Future of U.S. Policy

A spreading Islamic insurgency engulfs the amorphous and ungoverned border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. After initial victories by the United States and the Northern Alliance in autumn 2001, hundreds of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters fled Afghanistan to seek refuge across the border in Pakistan's rugged northwest. Since 2007, the number of ambushes, militant offensives, and targeted assassinations has risen sharply across Afghanistan, while suicide bombers and pro-Taliban insurgents sweep through settled areas of Pakistan at an alarming pace. For better and for worse, Pakistan will remain the fulcrum of U.S. policy in the region -- its leaders continue to provide vital counterterrorism cooperation and have received close to $20 billion in assistance from the United States, yet elements associated with its national intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, covertly assist militant proxy groups destabilizing the region.Instead of "surging" into this volatile region, the United States must focus on limiting cross-border movement along the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier and supporting local Pakistani security forces with a small number of U.S. Special Forces personnel. To improve fighting capabilities and enhance cooperation, Washington and Islamabad must increase the number of Pakistani officers trained through the U.S. Department of Defense International Military Education and Training program. In addition, U.S. aid to Pakistan must be monitored more closely to ensure Pakistan's military does not divert U.S. assistance to the purchase of weapons systems that can be used against its chief rival, India. Most important, U.S. policymakers must stop embracing a single Pakistani leader or backing a single political party, as they unwisely did with Pervez Musharraf and the late Benazir Bhutto. America's actions are not passively accepted by the majority of Pakistan's population, and officials in Islamabad cannot afford to be perceived as putting America's interests above those of their own people. Because the long-term success of this nuclear-armed Muslim-majority country depends on the public's repudiation of extremism, and our continued presence in Afghanistan is adding more fuel to violent religious radicalism, our mission in the region, as well as our tactics, our objectives, and our interests, must all be reexamined

Social Media Networks and the Discourse of Resistance: A sociolinguistic CDA of Biafra Online Discourses

This study focuses on how Social Media Networks (SMN) have been used in recent times to champion social protests and resistance against oppression and political power abuse. Hence, ‘discourse of resistance’ takes a cue from the current waves of resistance and political revolutions in North Africa and the Arab world, which have been largely attributed to the vibrant SMN. In Nigeria, SMN have been used to mobilize support and active participation in popular efforts to achieve socio-political reforms. The corpus comprises mainly blogs and discussion forums hosted by the Biafra Online Campaign Groups (BOCG). The BOCG consist of persons and groups of the Igbo ethnic group of Nigeria, living in and outside of the country, that advocate a separate nation for the Igbos and accuse the government of Nigeria of marginalizing them. The study applies a sociolinguistic-based Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to investigate how sociolinguistic issues such as virtual community, identity, language variations and social interaction are used to project self-determination and the struggle for political independence. It further examines how ideology is reflected in this context via the discourses produced by BOCG in relation to the Nigerian state

West African English in Digital Discourse

This paper applies sociolinguistic and discourse-analytical approaches to examine the features of West African English (WAE) in digital discourse. Data comprises 23,374 posts and responses from some popular social and political online forums hosted by Nigerians (i.e. Nairaland and Naijapals); Ghanaians (i.e. Ghanaforum.com), and Sierra Leoneans (i.e. Sierra Online club and Sierra Leone Forum). These digital forums have served as social media platforms for discussions and debates on, and responses to recent socio-political events in those countries. Findings show that three varieties of WAE are evident in online discourse namely, the acrolect (high), mesolect (middle), and basilect (low), which sometimes depend on the educational level of the users. The local pidgin is also frequently used especially in the Nigerian forums. These varieties in turn reflect features that are characteristic of WAE such as (i) loan words within the standard (acrolect) variety (ii) code-switching between the standard variety and pidgin/Krio (iii) evidence of deviants/errors characteristic of the basilect variety and (iv) linguistic creativity such as coinages, and the language style of the Internet. Findings further show that West African online communicators in English have adapted their socio-cultural nuances of language use to modern information technology

Community and Social Interaction in Digital Religious Discourse in Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon

Since the advent of the Internet, religion has maintained a very strong online presence. This study examines how African Christianity is negotiated and practised on the Internet. The main objectives are to investigate to what extent online worshippers in Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon constitute (online) communities and how interactive the social networks of the churches are. This study shows that some important criteria for community are met by African digital worshippers. However, interaction flow is more of one to many, thus members do not regularly interact with one another as they would in offline worship. Worshippers view the forums as a sacred space solely for spiritual matters and not for sharing social or individual feelings and problems. However, the introduction of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and interactive forums is an interesting and promising new development in religious worship in Africa

The Discourse of Digital Deceptions and ‘419’ Emails

This study applies a computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) to the study of discourse structures and functions of ‘419’ emails – the Nigerian term for online/financial fraud. The hoax mails are in the form of online lottery winning announcements, and email ‘business proposals’ involving money transfers/claims of dormant bank accounts overseas. Data comprise 68 email samples collected from the researcher’s inboxes and colleagues’ and students’ mail boxes between January 2008 and March 2009 in Ota, Nigeria. The study reveals that the writers of the mails apply discourse/pragmatic strategies such as socio-cultural greeting formulas,self-identification, reassurance/confidence building, narrativity and action prompting strategies to sustain the interest of the receivers. The study also shows that this genre of computer-mediated communication (CMC) has become a regular part of our Internet experience, and is not likely to be extinct in the near future as previous studies of email hoaxes have predicted. It is believed that as the global economy witnesses a recession, chances are that more creative and complex ways of combating the situation will arise. Economic hardship has been blamed for fraud/online scams, inadvertently prompting youths to engage in various anti-social activities. K E Y W O R D S : computer-media communication, deceptions, discourse, email, ‘419’, fraud, hoax

Ethno-pragmatics of Ońunwa Performance of the Igbo of Nigeria

This study examines how cultural practices and belief systems are constructed in On´unwa performance � a popular infancy-rites ritualistic lyrics of the Igbo of south-eastern Nigeria. The study applies a combination of discourse approach, ethnography, and pragmatics in the analysis of data, showing how discourse, is representational of sociocultural experience, identity, and social relationships. The discourse of On´unwa features mostly poetry as song texts (lyrics) and dance and exhibits some traditional patterns of behavior and world-view. Data comprise 10 translated texts that were rendered in songs and performed during a session of On´unwa dance of the Ngwa tribe of the Igbo. The study demonstrates that the infancy rites songs generally performed by women, re-enact some culturally determined gender roles as opposed to western popular advocacy of gender equality. Masculinity and femininity in this context are perceived as divine and unchanging, while traditional womanhood is natural, legitimate and inevitable and women affirm, defend and indeed perpetuate it. On´unwa rejects radical feminism and gayism and maintains the cultural position that there is a biological difference between a man and a woman. In all, this study shows how culture permeates our everyday discourses and argues that discourse is indeed a cultural practice. Keywords: On´unwa; discourse; gender; song-text; cultur