Religious vehicle stickers in Nigeria: a discourse of identity, faith and social vision

Abstract

This study focuses on analysing the ways in which vehicle stickers construct individual and group identities, people's religious faith and social vision in the context of religious assumptions and practices in Nigeria. Data comprise 73 vehicle stickers collected in Lagos and Ota, between 2006 and 2007 and are analysed within the framework of the post-structuralist model of discourse analysis which views discourse as a product of a complex system of social and institutional practices that sustain its continuous existence (Derrida, 1982; Fairclough, 1989, 1992, 1995; Foucault, 1972, 1981). Results show that through stickers people define their individual and group identities within religious institutional practices. And as a means of group identification, they guarantee social security and privileges. In constructing social vision the stickers help mould the individual aspiration about a future which transcends the present. Significantly, stickers in the data also reveal the tension between Islam and Christianity and the struggle to propagate one above the other.

An Exploration of Graffiti on University’s Walls: A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis Study

“…Abel and Buckley (1977, p. 3) Basthomi (2007) argued that graffiti are related to any sort of symbols, scratches, drawings, signs, paintings found on walls or anywhere irrespective to what inspires the writing. Considering their various forms, they have been studied from different angles: social (Adams &Winter, 1997), cultural, religious (Chiluwa, 2008), political (Salamon, 2005, Morva, 2016, language learning (Mwangi, 2012), motivational and emotional (Peiris, and Jayantha, 2015), gendered (House, 2007, Matthews, et al, 2012, Haslem, 2012, linguistics (Grider, 1975, Abu-Jaber, et al, 2012 quantitative, preventative, and aesthetic (for more illustration see Gadsby, 1995).…”

“…Fairclough (1995; argued that analysing a text should take into account various elements: functional, lexical, grammatical, coherence, and textual structure. Fairclough (1989Fairclough ( , 1995 extended the notion of discourse from a merely unprompted and natural "language in use" (Brown & Yule, 1983) and a means to recognize the speakers' intentions ( Van Dijk, 1985) to be part and product of social practices (Chiluwa, 2008). Fairclough (1995) contended that "ideologies reside in texts" that "it is not possible to 'read off' ideologies from texts" and that "texts are open to diverse interpretations" (p. 71).…”

Kuwaitis’ Attitudes towards Vehicles’ Stickers in Kuwait: A Sociolinguistic Investigation

“…She (ibid) investigated the cultural and linguistic functions of con safos graffiti within the Mexican-American community. Some scholars have seen graffiti as a means of language learning (Mwangi, 2012), as discourse of religious identity (Chiluwa, 2008), as political discourse (Mirzaalikhani, 2011;Obeng, 2000aObeng, , 2000bBloch, 2000;Case, 1992;Salamon, 2005), and as a gendered discourse (Moonwomon, 1995;House, 2007). Newhagen and Ancell, (1995), for example, believe that content analyses of bumper stickers through ethnographic methods and approaches in social psychology show that stickers are discursive means of expressing emotions and social status whereas Bloch (2000) believes that they are a spontaneous medium of protest evolving into a routinized form of public discourse.…”

“…Scholars studying graffiti or stickers on various vehicles used a variety of terms to refer to this phenomenon: Bumper stickers (Bloch, 2000;Case, 1992Salamon, 2005, House, 2007 vehicle stickers (Chiluwa, 2008), truck graffiti (Basthomi, 2009;Farnia & Tohidian, 2013) or car written manuscripts (Divsalar & Nemati, 2012). It is worth noting that the term 'bumper stickers' was used by Rains et al (2009) to refer to sayings that are included in an e-mail signature file following personal identifiers such as one's name, phone number, and postal address.…”

“…Vehicles' stickers together with all kinds of graffiti, are usually used as a platform for social communication. Moreover, they exhibit some sexual or political contents; a lover's pledge, proposition, or obscene words (Chiluwa, 2008). Many studies, such as, EL-Nashar and Nayef (2016), Chiluwa (2008), Farnia and Tohidian (2013), and Divsalar and Nemati (2012) that analyzed vehicles' stickers adopted Fairclough's (1995) post-structuralist model of discourse analysis.…”