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This article examines the discursive practices of negotiating Nigeria׳s national identity evidenced in media discussions about Nigeria׳s Rebranding programme. Drawing the data from the responses of the Nigerian public to the Rebranding Nigeria programme as contained largely in letters to the editor, readers׳ text messages, and some headlines of features sourced from select Nigerian national dailies and one news magazine, the study explores the appropriation of the discursive practices of resistance such as framing, humour, negotiation of identity, configuration of alternative models, cynicism, parody and some other language games in negotiating Nigeria׳s national self-images. The study applies Fairclough׳s dialectical-relational approach to CDA which is based on the three dimensions of discourse, namely text, discourse practice, and social practice. The study contributes to existing studies on nation branding by bringing to the spotlight micro acts of resistance in nation branding discourse as opposed to nation-state based discourses which such studies have examined. In so doing, it demonstrates transformation of power relations in knowledge formations about national identity construction. It also reveals that schematic discursive practices largely deployed in organisational resistance could be appropriated to meet the contingency of contesting knowledge formations in nation-state discourses by the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the manifestos prepared by some candidates aspiring for the post of Vice-Chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile- Ife, Nigeria, between 1999 and 2000. It examines the appropriation of rhetorical tactics by the aspirants to impress upon the target audience that they possess the ability to clearly decipher the problems of the university and determine the required antidote. The study focuses on two major issues that are recurrent in the discourse: the challenges facing the university at the turn of the twenty-first century and the kind of leadership that the university would desire to stem the tide. It adopts Aristotle's model of rhetoric to analyse the discursive practices of the respective candidates relative to these key issues. It reveals that although the candidates address the same range of subjects, they still, at some point, employ varied rhetorical appeals to manipulate the target audience. Such appeals generally, however, still fall within the range of the rhetoric of political campaign, but they are strategically chosen to reflect the context of the discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper invites attention to language (ab)use evident in the lexico-semantic constructions and reconstructions that are tactically deployed to configure and, more often than not, to conceal Nigeria's debased value system. It discusses some linguistic choices in relation to the major facets of the situation, namely labour and productivity, security, social life and politics. The article acknowledges the fact that the depravity of Nigeria's social order is alarming and unhealthy for national development and, to this effect, has been the subject of many discourses. But it contends that the linguistic options that Nigerians use to code all kinds of unacceptable behaviour are as threatening to the cause of national development as the practices themselves. Therefore, this study posits that any crusade that is geared towards sanitizing the Nigerian society should not be directed only at the manifestations of the country's perverse world-view but also at the linguistic expressions that serve as their 'life support' system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]