This paper examines the media representation of the socio-political discourse that centres on the activities of Boko Haram, a Nigeria-based militant Islamic group that has been responsible for violent attacks on individuals and institutions in the country. The data for the study was derived from newspaper reports published in July and August 2011 in the wake of the bombing of the nation's police headquarters and the United Nation's House in Abuja, Nigeria. The theoretical framework employed for the analysis is Critical Discourse Analysis. This interdisciplinary and inter-discursive approach made the application of historical and ideological analysis possible. The authors were able to elicit the media representation of Boko Haram as a militant Islamic group with allies and members outside Nigeria. The group is also represented as one that has an international socio-political agenda that could threaten regional peace and the continued existence of Nigeria as a peaceful and stable polity. The paper concludes that contrary to scepticisms about daily newspapers as purveyors of misery and libel, Nigerian national newspapers serve as a source of accurate information and perceptive analysis on Boko Haram, a socio-political group whose actions are inimical to public peace and Nigeria's political stability. The paper concludes that the bombing of the Nigeria Police Headquarters and the United Nations House in Abuja by the group exposed the ill-preparedness of Nigerian security agencies to meet the security challenges of the 21st century.
This paper socio-critically analyses some visual constructions of humour on Facebook. Based on 17 visual data, gathered through the method of extensive Internet Ethnography, the paper indicates that members of the Facebook networking site are informal misogelasts, who through the methods of digital cloning, image cropping and digital impersonation, generate or appropriate visual materials and post such to generate social/communicational humour. Using insights from Visual Social Semiotics proposed by Hodge and Kress (1988) and Critical Social Semiotics espoused by Caldas-Couthard, Carmen Rosa and Van Leeuwen Theo (2003), analyses reveal that constructed visual humour incorporates and interrogates such social phenomena as religion, education, morals, love, health and politics. The paper concludes that Facebook is not just a site for meeting new faces and interacting with them but also a medium for obtaining information on these social phenomena and how they are represented in the minds of individuals.
Inspired by the popular view in the field of semiotics that everything is a sign of something or a sign for something, this article dwells on food significations in ‘Lere Oladitan's poem titled “Mounds for Sharing” in his poetry collection titled ‘Poem of the Week.' Using this poem as the paradigm to deconstruct some other poems in the collection, the article deconstructs this semiological practice (food symbolism) in four ways: first, as a sign deployed by the poet to contribute to the aesthetic and affective qualities of the poem; second, as an appropriation and exhibition of the values of giving and sharing which typify many (if not all) African cultures; third, as a semiotic strategy of self- depiction and fourth, as the strategy for developing the motif of sacrifice practically demonstrated by the poet in the manner in which the poems were first freely disseminated before they were compiled and published into a book form in 2016. Mounds for Sharing is used in this article as the paradigm of the other poems in the collection because there is ample evidence to show that the poem is the container of the general motifs developed in the other poems. First, the poet himself refers to it as “the signature tune” of the collection. Second, “Iyán tí mo gún, Baba má jẹ ǹ nìkan jẹ́” (the first two lines of the poem) is now Oladitan's sobriquet or designation in Obafemi Awolowo University community. The poet is now being referred to as Professor Iyán tí mo gún (Professor the Pounded Yam I Prepare) in the academic community. Third, in the inaugural lecture presented by the poet on August 23, 2011, the poem was given a theatrical performance by Awo Vasity Theatre, a theatre that is based in Obafemi Awolowo Universty Ile, Ife, Nigeria. The article indicates that food-related representations in the poem convey more than the general sense of food as the substance eaten for survival. The analysis, cast within the framework of food semiotics, shows that each poem of ‘Lere Oladitan is a kind of food which carries one or a combination of such connotations of food as: food for the thought, food for the social psyche and memory and food for personal spiritual and psychosocial growth.
In contemporary world, visual communication is fast growing in importance. In the internet, computer, digital media, Artificial Intelligent Programming Languages, etc, communication is dominated by visual resources. Most people, particularly in the third-world countries, face some difficulties in understanding this phenomenon of language. This study applies Eco-semiotic theory on the analysis of some mobile phone directory and call log icons. The study indicates that some of these visual codes do not constitute a new/esoteric language but that they are familiar resources appropriated and spray-painted to have novel semantic values. It therefore proposes that the reading and interpretation of mobile phone visual discourse can best be done through dependence on the general community and individuals’ knowledge of natural phenomena and material world from which these codes are generated. The study also indicates that the communication system is limited in its operation only at the primary level of signification and therefore proposes the exploration of both the primary and secondary level of signification so that audience, particularly those who can only read non linguistic signs would be adequately served by the emerging system of communication. On the whole, the study stresses the need for mobile phone technologists to orient their iconic designs towards meeting the needs of the illiterate audience by drawing iconic signs from their eco-semiotic environment.
The study investigates suicide discourse in selected e-newspapers in Nigeria using the theoretical framework of cognitive semiotics, espoused by Zlatev. It specifically explores how language and mind interact implicitly to project ideological meaning in the selected websites. Findings show that adverbials and interrogatives/rhetorical operations are significant socio-cognitive cues deployed by suicides to express ideational, justificatory, interpersonal, revolutionary, affective, aggressive, and depressive attitudes in the data. Instances of adverbials specifically evoke some physical dimensions of suicide, while Interrogatives/rhetorical operations reflect the psychological aspects of suicide. The study concludes that the solution to the subject of suicide lies partly in the hands of government (by providing jobs, bridging the gap between the rich and the poor, and regulating the sales of hazardous pesticides) and partly in the hands of every individual in the Nigerian clan (by learning to share their problems with guidance counsellors and reliable people around).
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