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This study explores ideological representations in the online images of the Oduduwa secessionist movement in Nigeria from a multimodal critical discourse analytical framework. The data, which comprise selected internet images obtained from the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the group, were qualitatively analyzed. The findings reveal that the images are ideologically designed to resist the Nigerian nation, call for the Yoruba nation, signal membership polarization, construct an Oduduwa national identity, construct the betrayal of the Yoruba nation, accentuate violence in Nigeria, and delegitimize the Nigerian nation. We argue that these discursive strategies are used to project resistance as well as radical and secessionist ideologies, which appear to be typical of secessionist organizations around the world. Additionally, this article sheds light on the paramount significance of ethnic identity in the organizational dynamics of resistance groups operating within the Nigerian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores nativisation processes in the area of pragmatics. Focussing on expressions of gratitude, more than 1,300 thanking speech acts elicited from Nigerian speakers of English via Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) and 628 thanking speech acts identified in various text categories of the International Corpus of English-Nigeria (ICE-Nig) were analysed (i) regarding the use of thanking strategy, linguistic expression and structural form and (ii) compared with other varieties of English. The results show distinct strategies and forms of expressing gratitude in Nigerian English (NigE) that suggest nativisation processes as they reflect local cultural and communicative practices. Furthermore, systematic differences between thanking speech acts in the corpus data and those elicited in the DCTs were observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a descriptive account of seven interjections, eish, yho, tjo, sho, hayi, hau, and mxm, which are adopted from different local South African languages into South African English. It investigates the frequencies, orthography, syntactic position, collocational forms and discourse-pragmatic roles of these seven interjections, through the lens of pragmatic borrowing and postcolonial corpus pragmatics. The data were retrieved from the South African segment of the Global Web-based English corpus and underwent quantitative and qualitative analysis. The findings indicate that the interjections are all emotive interjections, which mostly express negative emotions, except hayi, which is a phatic interjection that is largely used to show disapproval of some information. All the interjections favour clause-initial position except mxm, which is a loan interjection that represents the kiss-teeth or suck-teeth oral gesture that is common in some parts of Africa and the Caribbean. The article affirms that these loaned interjections accentuate the distinction of South African English from other varieties of English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nigerian English (NigE) is a second language (L2) variety of English which has been domesticated, acculturated, and indigenised (Taiwo, 2009: 7; Jowitt, 2019: 26), due to its co-existence with about five hundred indigenous Nigerian languages (see Eberhard, Simons & Fennig, 2019). It is the language of education, governance, law, the media, and formal financial transactions in Nigeria. Based on Schneider's (2003: 271) Dynamic Model of the evolution of the New Englishes, NigE can be located at the late stage of nativisation, while recent studies show that it is on the verge of entering endonormative stabilisation (Gut, 2012: 3; Unuabonah & Gut, 2018: 210). Although NigE is an L2, there is a growing number of young people who speak it as a first language (L1; see Jowitt, 2019: 16; Onabamiro & Oladipupo, 2019). NigE includes sub-varieties which are classified based on different factors such as region/ethnicity, and educational attainment (Banjo, 1971; Jibril, 1986; Udofot, 2003). Although Udofot (2003: 204) suggests that the sub-variety used by Nigerians who have been educated in tertiary institutions should be taken as the standard variety, Jowitt (1991: 47) opines 'that the usage of every Nigerian user is a mixture of Standard forms' and non-standard forms. The data used in this paper are a mix of both standard and non-standard forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the kinds of stance that but as a contrastive marker signals in Nigerian investigative public hearings, with a view to exploring the contexts in which the stances are made. The study examines forty purposively selected investigative public hearing sessions which involve interactions between complainants, defendants and a hearing panel. The data are analysed qualitatively utilising Du Bois' (2007) interactional view of stance and Martin and White's (2005) Appraisal system. Results indicate that but signals epistemic, evidential, emotive and evaluative stances within the narrative, interrogative and closing contexts. These stances and their contextual patterns depend heavily on the roles, goals and knowledge of the participants as stancetakers who position themselves, and align with other participants and the wider discourse community in order to express evaluation and intersubjective positioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores metapragmatic comments in Nigerian quasi-judicial public hearings, involving interactions between complainants, defendants and a hearing panel, with a view to investigating their forms, features, distribution and functions. The data are analysed quantitatively and qualitatively from a discourse-pragmatic framework that incorporates Verschueren’s theory of metapragmatics, Mey’s pragmatic act theory, Grice’s Cooperative Principle and conversation analysis. Four types of metapragmatic comments are used: speech act descriptions, talk regulation comments, maxim adherence/violation related comments and metalinguistic comments. Their distribution and functioning are shown to be partly predictable from properties of the speech event, while they also co-determine the nature and development of the analysed hearings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]