A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF NIGERIAN MILITARY COUP ANNOUNCEMENTS
A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF NIGERIAN MILITARY COUP ANNOUNCEMENTS
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Date
2008-04
Authors
ABAYA, ANGULU SAMSON
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Abstract
This study is concerned with the analysis of Nigerian military
coup announcements within the ambit of pragmatics. It adopts
the speech acts theory as developed by Austin (1962) and
revised by Adegbija (1982) and (1999).The study demonstrates
that despite their military background and format, the coup
announcements have some elements of political language
ingrained in them for specific purposes. Consequently, the data
was subjected to textual and opinion analyses. For the textual
analysis, the pragmasociolinguistic concept of theory of
pragmatics was applied. In the opinion analysis however, three
instruments were employed. The instruments are:
questionnaire, sampled opinions from newspapers and oral
interviews. The result shows that at the pragmatic context
level, the speech acts in each coup event depend largely on the
context that gave birth to them. The analysis at the social
context level reveals that the social relationship between the
interlocutors is both asymmetric and symmetric depending on
the audience that is being addressed by the coupists.At the
linguistic level, we found that diction is used to enforce or
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attenuate illocutionary force. Also, most of the sentence
constructions are in the passive as the coupists do not want to
create the impression of arrogance or brute force. However, a
few sentences in the active voice are employed to suggest that
the coupists would apply brute force if need be. The
conclusion of the study is that despite its peculiarities, the
Nigerian Military Coup Announcement is essentially a subset
of political language. Finally, the coup announcements are
themselves a composite of direct/indirect speech acts.
Description
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL, AHMADU BELLO
UNIVERSITY, ZARIA, IN PARTIAL
FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE
OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Keywords
PRAGMATIC,, ANALYSIS,, NIGERIAN,, MILITARY, COUP,, ANNOUNCEMENTS