1 Discourse analysis of English General Extenders in Nigerian Newspapers Editorials Thompson Ewata (13 November, 2011) Phd Thesis proposal Since the discovery of language, human beings have attempted to concentrate on communicating effectively among themselves. In such human interactions, how to pass their thoughts clearly has always been the focus; as not communicating enough gives room for misunderstanding and misrepresenting him. In the course of teaching and commenting on human communication - formal or informal, the essence of clear and precise communication has been the norm. In assessing the communication proficiency of a worker in the business environment, the worker’s ability to communicate clearly is rated as one of “the most important factor in making an executive promotable” (Adler & Elmhorst, 2002:5). However, it is of interest to state that in as much as clear and explicit communication is of importance to man, the human language does not, in all cases, state or express simply and clearly.
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Discourse Analysis of English General Extenders in Nigerian Newspapers Editorials
A PhD Thesis Proposal Submitted to Adekunle Ajasin University Akungba ondo State Nigeria
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Discourse analysis of English General Extenders in Nigerian Newspapers Editorials
1997), pragmatic devices (Stubbe & Holmes 1995) among others.
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For this study, I shall adopt general extenders as my terminology as used by Overstreet
(1999:3-4) who claims:
I call these expressions "general extenders": "general" because they are nonspecific, and
"extenders" because they extend otherwise grammatically complete utterances. They can
be divided into two sets: those beginning with and (and stuff, and everything), which
will be called "adjunctive general extenders," and those beginning with or (or something,
or anything), which will be called "disjunctive general extenders." An idea of the range
of possible types of expressions that could be classified as general extenders is provided
in the following list.
adjunctive general extendersand stuff (like that)and all (that)and everything (like that)and blah blah blahand thatand the likeand suchand what have youand so onand so forthand whatnotand the restand this and thatand whateverand you name itand the whole kit and caboodleand the whole nine yardsand the whole bit/thingand (all) (this/that)and (all) (this/that) {sort/kind/type} of{crap/thing/jazz/junk/mess/nonsense/shit/stuff}arid {crap/things/junk/shit/stuff} (like this/that)and {business/crap/things/junk/shit} of {this/that}(kind/sort/ilk/narure)et cetera
The second way of conceiving how thoughts are communicated is by the author/speaker
only conveying as much information as is needed in any given context, so that the
audience can recover their intended meaning from what was said/written as well as from
the context and implications. In this conceptual model, the author takes into account the
context of the communication and the mutual cognitive environment between the author
and the audience. (That is what the author/speaker thinks that audience already knows).
They then say just enough to communicate what they intend - relying on the audience to
fill in the details that they did not explicitly communicate. This can be visualized as
follows:
Speaker's thought/intention ± context-mediated information ⇒ encoded ⇒
transmitted ⇒ decoded ± context-mediated information ⇒ thought/intention
understood by hearer (an interpretive resemblance to the speaker's intention).
(Wikipedia).
Whatever the model of processing (whether classical or relevance theory), it is important
to state that communication entails two modes – the stated and the implied. Carson (n.d) affirms
that “it is widely accepted that there is a distinction to be made between the explicit content and
the implicit import of an utterance.”
Pietarinen (n.d.) argues that Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance theory fits into the
framework of Peirce (1839 - 1914) theory of “pragmatic theory of meaning”. Peirce “took
pragmatic meaning as a rule of logic embodied in the Pragmatic Maxim (PM)”. Pierce pragmatic
meaning, in considering the logicality of a thought, the practical consequences of that thought is
taken into account. The consequences of such “do not have to be actually acted out, but one has
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to consider them and take them to be conceivable if any thought was to be complete at all.”
(Pietarinen (n.d.).
Wilson and Sperber (2004) claim their theory should be seen as “an attempt to work out
in detail one of Grice’s central claims: that an essential feature of most human communication,
both verbal and non-verbal, is the expression and recognition of intentions”. They claim this is
an inferential way of arriving at the meaning of a communicative intent.
According to the code model, a communicator encodes her intended message into a
signal, which is decoded by the audience using an identical copy of the code. According
to the inferential model, a communicator provides evidence of her intention to convey a
certain meaning, which is inferred by the audience on the basis of the evidence provided.
An utterance is, of course, a linguistically coded piece of evidence, so that verbal
comprehension involves an element of decoding. However, the linguistic meaning
recovered by decoding is just one of the inputs to a non-demonstrative inference process
which yields an interpretation of the speaker's meaning (Wilson and Sperber, 2004).
In human communication, inference plays a key role as it is through inference that we
arrive at most of our meaning in the communicative intents of and with others. The speaker(s) do
not always say exactly or fully what they mean. It is our duty as receivers to work out what the
speakers have left unsaid from what they have said through inference. We infer the meaning of
the communicative intent of the other person(s) through what we already know through previous
experiences. When we infer, we “come to a conclusion or form an opinion about something on
the basis of evidence or reasoning” (Encarta Dictionary, 2009). The process of inference, which
is an aspect of inductive logic, entails the “process of drawing a conclusion about an object or
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event that has yet to be observed or occur, on the basis of previous observations of similar
objects or events” (Genoveva, 2008).
Relevance theory falls under the purview of inferential pragmatics whose goal “is to
explain how the hearer infers the speaker’s meaning on the basis of the evidence provided”
(Wilson & Sperber, 2004). This notion of inferring or arriving at meaning(s) of an utterance is
not new in the pragmatic of meaning circle as Grice had earlier made this claim that “utterances
automatically create expectations which guide the hearer towards the speaker’s meaning.”
Grice described these expectations in terms of a Co-operative Principle and maxims of
Quality (truthfulness), Quantity (informativeness), Relation (relevance) and Manner
(clarity) which speakers are expected to observe (Grice 1961, 1989: 368 - 72): the
interpretation a rational hearer should choose is the one that best satisfies those
expectations. Relevance theorists share Grice’s intuition that utterances raise expectations
of relevance, but question several other aspects of his account, including the need for a
Co-operative Principle and maxims, the focus on pragmatic processes which contribute to
implicatures rather than to explicit, truth-conditional content, the role of deliberate
maxim violation in utterance interpretation, and the treatment of figurative utterances as
deviations from a maxim or convention of truthfulness (Wilson and Sperber, 2004).
We can therefore conclude that (Wilson and Sperber, 1985/6) relevance theory is a theory
based on earlier ones made in pragmatics Peirce (1839 - 1914) Pragmatic Maxim and Grice
(1989) co-operative principles and maxims.
This theory, though, has acceptability among scholars in accounting for utterance
meaning like the ones before it – Pierce’s pragmatic meaning and Grice’s co-operative principles
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and maxims; has also generated a lot of reactions, too. Some scholars have argued against its use
in arriving at utterance meaning.
Carston argues that relevance theory does not take care of explicit/implicit dichotomy
“made within relevance theory and it plainly does not coincide with the distinction between
linguistically decoded meaning (“semantics”) and pragmatically inferred meaning.”
Blackmore (2001), on the other hand, argues that relevance theory does not account for
discourse meaning or study discourse at all as the “the concern in relevance theory is with
something internal to the human mind” while to her, from the definitional stance of Zelling
Harris the originator of the term discourse analysis and Chomsky’s (1986) “externalized
language (or E-language)”, which is analogous to discourse, discourse is “a structural
phenomenon or a social phenomenon.”
Giora (1997) argues that “relevance cannot be the only principle that governs human
communication … can by no means replace current accounts of discourse coherence … since it
is neither necessary nor sufficient for text well-formedness.”
Despite this stance by scholars that oppose the idea of relevance to discourse, they have
not, in any way, set aside the claims made by relevance theory that we process an utterance
based on its relevance to us as humans. Though we may say subjective processing could becloud
our processing, yet, we cannot totally say that relevance is not necessary to utterance processing.
Scope of Study
My intention in this work is to prove that human interaction is not in all cases explicit.
That, most times, humans intentionally prefer inexplicitness in their communication without
worrying about the effect of such communication on their intended receivers as they have taken
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it for granted that their receivers understand them. To prove this, I shall examine the Nigerian
newspaper editorials published in English demonstrate that human communication is not, at all
time, explicit.
Objectives of the Study
The objectives I hope to achieve in this study are:
1. Identify general extenders in the Nigerian newspaper editorials
2. Determine the total number of general extenders use in the Nigerian newspaper editorials
3. Examine, with statistical evidence, preponderance or otherwise of general extenders in the Nigerian newspaper editorials
4. Classify general extenders into typology
5. Analyse the identified general extenders in the Nigerian newspapers editorials
6. Explain the functions of general extenders in the Nigerian newspaper editorials
7. Analyse the usage of general extenders in the Nigerian newspaper editorials
8. Show in the Nigerian newspapers editorial that formal communication can inexplicit through the use of general extenders
9. Add more objective from suggestions from this august body and my further readings
Methodology
To carry out this task, I intend to use the Nigerian newspapers (in English) editorials.
The choice of newspaper editorials is borne out of the fact that the (newspaper) editorials form
part of the formal communicative events (in writing) of Nigeria. Since language is the vehicle
through which the messages of the editorials are passed, it gives us ample room to examine
language in a true life situation. Seen from the perspective of Schiffrin (1987:3):
1) Language always occurs in a context.
2) Language is context sensitive
3) Language is always communicative
4) Language is designed for communication
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Currently, there are about seventy – two (72) different types of newspapers (or papers)
spread across Nigerian, please, see (http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/nigeria.htm) which
houses online editions. To be classified as a paper for this work, Wikipedia advises that the paper
must meet these “four” criteria, namely:
i. publicity: Its contents are reasonably accessible to the public.
ii. periodicity: It is published at regular intervals.
iii. currency: Its information is up to date.
iv. universality: It covers a range of topics”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper#Types).
At the same time, the newspaper must fall into the following classification:
a) national: contain some national and internal news, but focus on news relating to relating to a specific area of the country.
b) regional: contain national and international news, but focus on fairly local news topics in details. Usually based around towns, cities or groups of villages.
c) local: a newspaper which covers news across the whole country, together with international news.
d) tabloid: the largest type of newspaper! Cover all national and international news, often in a serious or formal way.
e) broadsheet: cover all national and international news. often contain a certain amount of more 'gossipy' or scandalous news items, or more personal stories
(www.teachit.co.uk).
To carry out this study, I intend to use the “stratified sampling technique” to pick the
newspaper editorials to be used for the work. This will be done by listing all the newspapers in
alphabetical order then assigning them numbers (1 – 72) in that order; the papers will then be
grouped into groups of four. The fourth item on each group will be picked as a representative of
the group. Based on the above, my sample design shall include a 25% (which translates to 18
newspapers). Anything more than 25% population of the census of papers in Nigeria will be too
language considered in their full textual, social, and psychological context, become meaningful
and unified for their users.”
Van Dijk (1981) claims that discourse analysis is a multi-disciplinary analytical tool that
transcends different disciplines and fields of knowledge. It is “an inter-multidisciplinary study. It
has its root in … linguistics, literary study and anthropology and it is being practiced presently
virtually in the humanities and social sciences…”
A tentative Table of Content and list of References to consult are attached.
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