Browsing by Author "Solomon-Etefia, P. O."

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A pragma-semiotic analysis of the Catholic bishops’ communiqué on the Ebola epidemic: Impact on the University of Ibadan Catholic faithful
(Lulu Press Inc., 2017) Solomon-Etefia, P. O.; Nweya, G. O.
This paper examines the extracts of the communiqué made by the Ibadan Catholic Bishops to the congregation on the Ebola epidemic. The paper identifies the practs, gives a semiotic interpretation of the signs visible, and discusses the impact of the communiqué on the Catholic faithful in the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The data were collected from the Catholic Sunday Bulletin and the interviews conducted with, and the field notes collected from, the Catholic faithful informants (N=30) in the University of Ibadan. It utilised Mey’s pragmatic acts theory (PAT) and Saussure’s model of semiotic signs as the theoretical framework. The study shows that the communiqué is information motivated discourse on Ebola which comprises of direct acts that make use of the contextual features of shared situational knowledge, inferences, relevance, shared cultural knowledge, and references thereby exhibiting the pragmemes of cautioning, commanding, counselling and threatening; the semiotic sign ‘Holy Communion’ signifies the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ present in Bread and Wine, the semiotic sign ‘self-signing of oneself with holy water’ signifies spiritual cleansing, and the ‘sign of peace’ signifies love and unity among the people of God in the Church. Both the pragmemes and the semiotic signs have an impact on the Catholic Faithful in University of Ibadan.
An Ethno-Statistical Analysis of Direct and Indirect Acts in Catchy HIV/AIDS Campaign Messages in Benin Metropolis
(International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies, 2015) Solomon-Etefia, P. O.; Nweya, G. O.
Catchy HIV/AIDS campaign messages in Benin metropolis exhibit the characteristics of direct and indirect acts. These acts play pragmatic roles in peoples’ understanding of catchy HIV/AIDS campaign messages in Benin metropolis. This paper investigates direct and indirect acts in HIV/AIDS catchy campaign messages in Benin metropolis from an ethno-statistical perspective; it assess respondents’ understanding of the campaign messages with the features of directness and indirectness. The data for the study were collected using the questionnaires from five LGAs in Benin metropolis. These are Oredo, Ikpoba-Okha, Ovia-North-East and Ovia-South-West and the data was analysed using the simple percentages. The paper reveals that some respondents could not understand some of the messages because of the pragmatic indirectness. It was also observed that background characteristics (age, education, gender, and ethnic group), understandable language for reading and writing of respondents and how HIV/AIDS messages were known play a major role in understanding the direct and indirect acts in the messages. The paper concludes by advising the message provider to write in simpler form for the effectiveness of these campaign messages, creating of messages in native languages is also encouraged.
Sentential Negation in the Imilike Dialect of Igbo
(University of Ibadan, 2015) Nweya, G. O.; Solomon-Etefia, P. O.
In spite of the fact that negation is a universal principle of human language, the process of negation and negative markers tends to be distinct across languages and dialects. This descriptive study therefore examines the process of achieving sentential negation in the Imilike dialect of the Igbo language. Its specific objectives are to identifying negative markers and negative polarity items; and show how negators interact with other functors in the dialect. Data for the study were collected from native speakers through oral interview and observation. Analysis is based on the verb forms identified in the dialect in relation to their affirmative counterparts. The results show that negative markers in the dialect are - ga/-g~ and -le/-If! which are suffixes. The former is used in the indicative, progressive and future tense/aspectual forms, while the latter is employed in imperative constructions. Tense/aspect markers such as the past, the perfective, the progressive and the future have negative forms which cooccur with the main negator in negative constructions. The study shows the rich inflectional and phonological properties of the dialect such as affix sequencing and vowel harmony. The study concludes that the process of negation and negative markers in Imilike Igbo is noticeably distinct from those of standard lgbo.