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Item The dynamics of the Language of newspaper headlines in Nigeria(International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 2013-09-01) Ayodabo, Sunday J.This paper has looked at the dynamics of the structures of headlines. Related literature was reviewed on functions and influence of the print media, mass media and language development, and studies in headlines, to give the work the necessary theoretical foundation. The study employed survey approach to look at reportage of headlines of some newspapers in Nigeria. Three questions guided this study: What are the types of headlines cast for the stories? What is the syntactic structure of the headlines? What is the level of social responsibility displayed by the editors, in casting the headlines? A total of 24 headlines were purposively collected as data, and analyzed. The analysis has revealed that ‘plain’, ‘headlines with pointers’, and ‘speech as headlines’ characterized our data. Also, most of the headlines are cast in simple sentence structures. This result is significant for mass media teachers as they apply principles and theories of language, in their business of teaching mass media courses, daily.Item Communicative Strategies in Contemporary Nigerian Drama: A Stylistic Analysis of Ahmed Yerima’s The Lottery Ticket(Scholars Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, 2014) Emike, Acheoah John; Ayodabo, Sunday JosephThe study is a stylistic analysis of Ahmed Yerima‟s The Lottery Ticket. Like other contemporary Nigerian dramatists, Yerima is engaged in the quest for suitable forms with which the Nigerian experience can be transmitted through drama. We examine the stylistic features in the Play. We mainly hinge on the Communicative Model of stylistic theory for the analysis of four data selected via defined parameters. The analysis reveals that the Play is characterized by authorial use of diverse stylistic and rhetorical devices: cohesive devices, point of view, pidgin and figurative language. Thus, the structure of the play is functional. We rely on the Projection Principle to extend the stylistic features of the play to contemporary Nigerian dramaItem Ritual as Theatre: An Analysis of Oduduwa Festival in Ikoro-Ekiti(Language in India, 2015-08) Macaulay, Abiodun J.Oduduwa festival is one of the festivals mostly cherished among the Yoruba people right from the onset. As an unforgettable hero in Yoruba history Oduduwa, after his death was deified and worshipped by the people with cult following. This paper specifically focuses on the Oduduwa festival celebration in Ikoro-Ekiti, a Yoruba town in the south west region of Nigeria. The research examines the history, origin and the mode of worship of Oduduwa deity while isolating the ritual performances and theatricalities in the festival celebration. The paper concludes that while ritual acts and ceremonies are fading away in most African communities , festival like the Oduduwa should be encouraged and supported because of its significant socio- cultural contributions to the Ikoro-Ekiti community.Item Exploration of Proverb as a Crucial Device in Tunde Kelani’s Saworoide(An unpublished essay downloaded, 2016) Ayodabo, Sunday J.This treatise explores Tunde Kelani’s movie Saworide (1999), with a view to examining the functions of proverbs in movie production. A textual analysis of some selected proverbs in the movie was carried out to demonstrate the implications of this phenomenon in an attempt by the producer to project the themes of political legitimacy, accountability and institutional checks on corruption in a changing socio-political structure. The study highlighted the importance of proverbs in films, and showcased how proverbs serve as a crucial device of story-telling in the re-creation of a genuine and believable Nigerian democratic story. The study revealed that proverbs in the movie serve as material resources in generating the plot development, criticizing actors’ actions, depicting, transmitting and preserving the Yoruba culture, and projecting the moral and thematic purposes of the movieItem Traditionalism as a source of Change: Ola Rotimi’s Kurunmi as an epitome(The Belogradchik Journal for Local History, Cultural Heritage and Folk Studies Volume, 2016) Ayodabo, Sunday J.Ola Rotimi’s Kurunmi has generally been classified as a tragedy, historical play, postcolonial text, satire etc. Such general classifications have limited the analyses of the play to thematic thoughts such as cultural clash, postcolonial disillusionment, and its understanding as an emblem of the Greek dramatic tradition. For this reason, this paper examines the issue of traditionalism in the play centering on the faithfulness of the writer in utilizing actual historical materials and personalities of the 19th century Yoruba war between Ijaye and Ibadan armies (in Nigeria) and its implication on the general sensibility of the society. The paper examines the role of the major character of the play, Kurunmi, as a traditionalist and how his display of epic heroism helps produce resounding themes of socio-cultural relevance. It argues that a conscious reading of the personalities, attributes, and egos of Kurunmi as a traditionalist would make the reader have the privilege of having a real sense of the complex nature of Kurunmi’s character rather than seeing him as a prototype of a Greek tragic hero.Item A Configuration of Socio-Political Dialectics in Nigerian Pidgin English: Trends in Peter Onwudijo’s Poetry(International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies (IJHCS) ISSN 2356-5926, 2016-03-29) Ayodabo, Sunday J.Peter Onwundijo’s poetry collection, De Wahala for Wazobia (2007), comments on the contemporary Nigeria’s pitiable social problems. The poet employs Nigerian Pidgin English, not only as a dialectal tool to examine the issue of Nigeria’s amalgamation, but also as a lingua franca, which aptly describes the polity of multilingual Nigeria. It addresses the myriad hydra-headed issues like corruption, educational decay, election malpractices, neocolonialism, and insecurity among other forms of vices plaguing the nation which continue to militate against her development. The poems were analysed using sociolinguistics and semiotic theories as frameworks. The result of the analyses showed that the poet’s ability to effectively use the Nigerian Pidgin English to address such important issues does not make the language inferior when compared to the other established languages of the world. Rather, it should be seen as a language (second) that reflects creativity, productivity, simplicity, acceptability and understanding among the Nigerians. Indeed, it makes for a wider understanding of the poet’s major concern, as the pidgin, in Nigeria, is often being described as “the language of the people” The study appraised the collection as an attempt at demystifying the Nigerian Pidgin English as well as evaluating its relevance for modern Nigerian poetry in its quest to radicalize the political and economic situation in Nigeria.Item Reflections of Postmemory and Trauma in Sade Adeniran’s Imagine This and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun(Modern Research Studies: An International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2016-09) Ayodabo, SUNDAY JOSEPHThis essay attempts a critical reading of two third-generation Nigerian novels – Imagine This by Sade Adeniran and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In these texts, the writers weave past and personal traumatic history with fiction. Adichie documents the violence inflicted upon the Igbo people in Nigeria in the 1967-1970 war while Adeniran’s novel is a narration of the trauma of battling with migration from Britain to a village, in Southwestern Nigeria. Using the doctrines of Postcolonial, Psychoanalysis and Trauma theory and with emphasis on the child protagonist in the novels, the essay demonstrates that apparently because of the impact of the lived Nigerian history in its stark and crudest realities on the writers, their painful experiences as child in Nigeria are assumed to commensurate with the portraits of their characters, and to some extent, their works. The essay also argues that the ability of the writers to successfully reincarnate their ‘postmemory’ and traumatic experiences represent a continuous creative struggle by the writers to formalise the search for selfhood, and to demonstrate that writing is an important process of unburdening, healing and dealing with inassimilable forms of history and memory.Item Contemporary Marriage Processes in Nigeria: Willing Love, Perilous Business, Post-Marriage Problems(Modern Research Studies: An International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2017-09) SOLANKE, STEPHEN O.; AYODABO, SUNDAY JOSEPHFrom immemorial, marriage has been regarded as the union of a man and a woman to live together for love, procreation and social acceptance (The Bible - Genesis 2:14, Ephesians 5:33, The Quran - 2:187, 30:21). In the African world, especially among Nigerians, this is not different. Contemporary Nigerian marriage ceremonies, the subject of this paper, reflect a link between tradition and modernity. The process demands the new couple have enough finance to marry and to see them through life the many months after the marriage ceremonies. Steps involved in the marriage process are many and daunting. Each involves huge sums of finance: Initial Introduction of the two families; Engagement (Traditional Marriage); Registry (Court Marriage); Church (Christian/White) Marriage; Mosque (Islamic/Nikkah) Marriage; and Reception (for refreshment) amongst others. This paper contends that the financial implications involved are so enormous that young men are dilly-dallying over getting married. This situation is worsened by economic situations in the country. Many eligible and willing men are unemployed despite their academic qualifications. Therefore, many young unmarried females are wasting away. It is averred that most effects are felt immediately after the marriage ceremony in the lives of the couples. Using the descriptive analysis, this paper examines the issue in view of the socio-economic and marital problems posed by this situation (at the pre and post marriage positions). This paper submits that changes must start to make the Nigerian marriage process and marital life more welcoming, affordable, and attractive to the to-bewedded and the newly-wedded.Item Contexts and Proximisation Features in President Muhammadu Buhari’s Speech on Regional Security in West Africa(Department of English, University of Ibadan, 2017-12) Olajimbiti, Ezekiel O.This paper complements the pragmatic attempts in its adoption of Auer’s contextual model and Cap’s proximisation theory in carrying out a context-driven and discourse space pragmatic analysis to track the speaker-imposed construal distance and proximity in political discourse on security. President Buhari’s speech at the 2nd regional security summit delivered on the 14th May, 2016 has been purposively selected for this exploration. The study identified three contexts namely securitisation, rehabilitation and solidarity within which President Buhari seeks legitimization by using spatial, temporal and axiological proximisation features in the representation of the actors involved. The study identified pragmatic usage of verb phrases as category accommodating markers and the symbolic movement between the discourse space centre inside-the-deictic centre noun phrases and discourse space periphery outside-the-deictic centre noun phrases is used by the speaker to achieve his vantage intentions. The study also found out that the President deployed lexico-grammatical expressions to label Boko Haram against the ideologies of extremist, terrorist, and killer. The study concludes that President Buhari’s orientation to shared situational knowledge and mutual contextual belief within the social context of securitisation, solidarity and rehabilitation imply that African politicians’ use of language on war on terror promotes solidarity, galvanise support of the general public by legitimising actions against insurgency or terrorism with a view to curbing the menace.Item Discourse Pattern, Contexts and Pragmatic Strategies of Selected Fraud Spam(Department of English Language Studies, Elizade University, NIgeria, 2018) Olajimbiti, Ezekiel O.The thrust of this paper is the pragmatic investigation of fraud spam, the unwanted emails containing the strategic use of language with the intention to swindle money from the recipients. Sixty (60) English medium email samples were collected from the author of the present paper’s email spam between July 2017 and February 2018 in Nigeria. These were analysed using Halliday and Hasan’s Generic Structure Potential and an aspect of Fetzer’s cognitive context model. The study identified six discourse patterns: salutation, discourse initiation, enticing information, mild conscription into business, request and subscription; orienting to contexts of business and religion; manifesting pragmatic strategies of adversatives, evocation of business idea, evocation of religious affinity and evocation of messianic figure. The study, therefore, concludes that cyber-fraudsters deploy similarly familiar patterns and contexts evincing strategic persuasive language to defraud their prospective victims. Significantly, the study complements existing literature on fraud discourse in linguistic scholarship.Item Wifehood (Im) Politeness in Negotiating Responsibility, Position and Solidarity in Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband has Gone Mad Again(CSC Canada, 2018-08) Olajimbiti, Ezekiel O.This study examines how wifehood is discursively practised in Yorùbá traditional polygamous marriage system as portrayed in Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again. Purposively, excerpts involving the three wives of the major character, Lejoka Brown were sampled from the text. Through the instrumentality of politeness and impoliteness theories the study has unpacked the negotiation of responsibilities among wives in discharging their wifehood, where language is discursively used politely and impolitely based on the display of native competence and incompetence of the personalities involved. The study unveils hatred, unverified assumption, ignorance, anger and misconception as emergent factors that usually birth rivalry in wifehood negotiation of position that characterised impoliteness and family dysfunction in the rich verbal sociocultural setting. The study underscores the peaceful coexistence of wifehood within family discourse as a contribution to solving unhealthy marital issues characterised by linguistic politeness and impoliteness that pervade the contemporary society.Item The Pragmatics of Political Deception on Facebook(Department of English Language Studies, Elizade University, NIgeria, 2019) Olajimbiti, Ezekiel O.Facebook, an intrinsic part of 21st century social realities where cognitive-participatory activities are largely captured, is consistently explored for political deception. This chapter investigates how participants utilize language to deceive politically the Nigerian electorate on Facebook. For data, 250 Facebook posts on Nigerian politics were sampled, out of which 50 were purposefully selected for being highly rich in deceptive content in order to unpack online deception through multimodal critical discourse analysis. Four deceptive forms—equivocation of identity, exaggeration of performance, falsification of corruption cases, and concealment of offences—within two socio-political contexts—election and opposition—constituted the posts. These prompt an evocation of a messianic figure, blunt condemnation, and evocation of sympathy and retrospection to achieve the political intentions of criticism, self-presentation, silent opposition, and galvanizing public support. The chapter concludes that political propaganda taps into Facebook users to appeal to their political biases and sway their opinions.Item FILM REVIEW: Tunde Kelani, director. Akinwumi Isola and the Rest of Us. 2017. 18 minutes. English and Yoruba, with English Subtitles. Mainframe Film and Television Production.(African Studies Review, 2019) Onikoyi, Babatunde; Ayodabo, SundayIn Akinwumi Isola and the Rest of Us, director Tunde Kelani has produced a reflective documentary that captures his artistic and fascinating relationship with the cinematographer and playwright Akinwumi Isola. Though partly a tribute to the late Professor Akinwunmi Isola, the documentary chronicles Kelani’s collaborative film projects with the Yoruba playwright Isola, whose plays were once adapted for the stage by the Isola Ogunsola Theatre Group. The result of this collaboration is a kind of neo-traditional cinema which seeks to emphasize the filmmaker’s respect for and allegiance to the Yoruba culture. Some examples of these works include Efunsetan Aniwura (1982), Kosegbe (1995), Saworoide (1999), Oleku (1997), and Agogo Eewo (2002). Tunde Kelani has interspersed this short documentary with graphics, stills, and excerpts from the aforementioned films, including archival footage of theatrical performances.Item Stance and Evaluation in the First Inaugural Speeches of Lagos State Governors: A Roadmap for the Development of Lagos State(Asian Research Journal of Arts & Social Sciences, 2020-04-20) Ugah, Helen Ufuoma; Olaniyan, Oluwayomi RosemarySeveral researchers have posited that political inaugural speeches embody several meanings that help the politician connect with their audience as well as convey the new administration’s commitment to leadership. This study argues that inaugural speeches also provide a glimpse into the future trajectory of a country or state. This study used Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal Theory to investigate stance taking in the first inaugural speeches of the following governors of Lagos State: Bola Ahmed Tinubu (1999-2007), Babtunde Raji Fashola (2007-2015) and Akinwunmi Ambode (since 2015). Findings from the study demonstrate that the speeches not only predict the roadmap of the future of Lagos State or proclaim the actions of the Governors and the supposed effects of their past and future actions, but they also contain attitudinal meanings of affect, judgement and appreciation used to connect and communicate effectively with the audience, and also to present the future plans for the development of the state. These findings portray that stance taking in political inaugural speeches is a mechanism used by politicians to galvanise solidarity and support from state, boast about past performances, pledge allegiance to the positive development of the state and call upon citizens to work unanimously with them. These findings corroborate those of the researchers cited above, explicate the nature of the use of language in inaugural speeches, and also maintain that political inaugural speeches give access to the knowledge of the historical development of a political sphere as a result of the stance embedded in them.Item Continuity and Discontinuity: Masculinity and Power Blocs in African Cinema(Routledge : QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO, 2021-01) Ayodabo, Sunday Joseph; Amaefula, Rowland ChukwuemekaItem Reading Dina Ligaga’s Women, Visibility and Morality in Kenyan Popular Media From Nigeria(Journal of African Cultural Studies, 2021-06) Ugah, Helen UfuomaItem Culture and Igbo notions of masculinity in Nigerian children’s literature(TYDSKRIF VIR LETTERKUNDE, 2021-09) Ayodabo, Sunday JosephChildren’s literature conveys the cultural and indigenous artistic experiences of the people to whom it is attributed. Earlier studies on modern Nigerian children’s literature focus mainly on the representation of moral etiquette with little attention to gender. The twin theme of culture and masculinity has not been paid close attention by scholars of children’s literature in Nigeria. In applying Igbo notions of masculinity, in this article I examine the role of oral tradition and culture in the construction of masculine identity in children’s literature in Nigeria using Ifeanyi Ifoegbuna’s Folake and Her Four Brothers, Anthonia Ekpa’s Edidem Eyamba and the Edikang-Ikong Soup, and Ikechukwu Ebonogwu’s The Champion of Echidime. I show how the ideals of masculinity, as visible and permissible in the traditional Igbo society, are, in particular, constructed and communicated through various oral and cultural norms such as praise poetry, war songs and dance, wrestling, and drumming. I reveal that oral and cultural traditions in children’s literature reflect attributes such as strength, toughness, honour, protection, respect, heterosexual desirability, and the projection of self-pride as acceptable and embraced masculine values among the Igbo in Nigeria. I also demonstrate how oral and cultural tradition is replete with masculine ideologies and messages that promote male dominance in the Igbo society.