Discourse Analysis of Christian Handbills in Ughelli
Chapter One
Purpose of the Study
The main purpose of this study is to examine the discourse of Christian handbills using Ughelli in Delta State as a focal point. While, the specific objectives include;
- identifying the different graphosyntactic errors in the language used in Christian handbills;
- identifying the various syntactic features used in Christian handbills in Ughelli;
- doing a discourse analysis of possible semantic implications of Christian handbills in Ughelli.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter reviews previous literatures on discourse analysis of Christian handbills. Hence, this is discussed under the following sub-headings;
- Overview of Discourse Analysis
- Types of Discourse Analysis
- Functions of Discourse Analysis
- Overview of Handbills
- Benefits of Christian Handbills
- The Importance of Handbills in Christianity
- Discourse Analysis of Christian Handbill
Overview of Discourse Analysis
Originally the word ‘discourse’ comes from Latin ‘discursus‘ which means ‘conversation, speech’. That is to say that discourse is not just a mental and lingual issue, but it is concerned with thoughts, emotions and excitements. Hence, the priority of a discourse is not necessarily rooted in reasoning power of that discourse, but the priority of a discourse is on one part a variable of mental and rational factors; and on the other part, emotional, inductive and persuasive factors (VanDijk, 1993). Discourse is a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke, or narrative.
Sawyer (2002:434) asserts that discourse is perceived in different ways depending on the subject area or the theoretical orientation of the researcher. For instance, according to post-colonial theory, discourse is a system of domination; to anthropology discourse is a culture or ideology; to sociolinguistics: discourse is a speech style or register; to psychology discourse is a physical or bodily practice while to feminist theory: discourse is a type of subject” (Phillips & Hardy 2002, Keller 2005).
According to Shabanali (2001) it is crucial to state that discourses are partial and positioned, and social difference is manifest in the diversity of discourses within particular cultural contexts. Discourse Analysis (DA) is regarded as a method to explain and analyze the results of any political elections. In fact discourse analysis techniques seem to be able to identify a general approach toward election and politics through considering some problems, issues and questions. Also the area of sloganeering and propaganda is treated as the area of discourse struggle.
Discourse analysis can also refer to the linguistic analysis of naturally occurring connected spoken or written discourse. Roughly speaking, it refers to the attempts to study about the organization of language above the sentence or above the clause, and to study larger linguistic unit, such as conversational exchanges or written texts. It follows that discourse analysis is also concerned with language use in social contexts and in particular with interaction or dialogue between speakers (Fairclough 2001:77).
According to Van Dijk, (2008:13) discourse analysis is the study of language-in-use. There are many different approaches to discourse analysis. Some of them look only at the “content” of the language being used, the themes or issues being discussed in a conversation or a newspaper article, for example. Other approaches pay more attention to the structure of language (“grammar”) and how this structure functions to make meaning in specific contexts. These approaches are rooted in the discipline of linguistics. Phillips & Hardy (2002) and Sawyer (2002) affirmed that it is used in different disciplines, in different ways, with different contents or meanings of the concept and correspondingly with different forms of analysis.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Study Area
The study area covered in this study was Ughelli Delta State, Nigeria. Some streets and major towns were selected because they contain the largest number of population of individuals and churches than the other streets in the study area.
Research Design
The research method or design adopted for this study is the descriptive survey method. Descriptive survey method involves a study of a population through the use of sample. The findings obtained from studying the sample can be applied to the entire population. This method allows the researcher to collect data and describe the discourse function in a more systematic and pragmatic manner.
Sample Population
In order to be able to conduct this research, a total of Ten (10) Christian handbills each were collected from Ten (10) different Churches in Ughelli, Delta State, all of which were placed between January and May, 2016.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
Introduction
This chapter focuses on the presentation and analysis of data based on the discuss analysis of Christian handbills used for crusades and evangelism collected from some churches in Ughelli Delta State.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Summary
This chapter examined the summary of the research work, the conclusions drawn based on the findings and the recommendations. Generally, this whole work focuses on discuss analysis of some selected Christian hand bills in Ughelli Delta State. The study has been divided into five chapters covering introduction and background information, review of related literatures, methodology, analysis and discussion of results, summary, conclusion and recommendations. Ten (10) different Christian handbills were collected from the study area and used in this study. Results obtained revealed that some writers just write and design handbills without knowing the implied meaning of some of these sentences may convey different meaning to different readers, different from the meaning that the writer was trying to imply.
Discuss analysis from this study has shown that majority of the expressions used in Christian handbills makes it possible for the majority of the literate audience to read and interpret the messages they carry while predicting effectively what the writer had in mind when producing or writing the handbill. Consequently, it can be deduced that even when some handbills might be outdated it can also convey another meaning to the reader. Most of the time, the intention of the reader is mainly to invite the reader to his church and because he knows that on a normal day someone will not just walk into his church except if there is a special occasion or invitation so he goes an extra mile to write or design an handbill so that the reader will get interested. Hence, the reason for sharing this handbill is to invite people to their churches. Most of the time when a person walks into a church for the first time and sees the kind of miracles or blessings that happens in side, there is a probability that he might want to continue coming and eventually turn the church to his worship centre and this was the main and first intention of the writer.
Conclusion
Communication as a means transmission of ideas, thoughts or feelings is in two major categories-the verbal and non verbal communication. The most common one used for interaction among the Christian societies is the non verbal handbills and posters. The present research work has been able to analyze some Christian handbills saying what they literally mean and what they also mean using discuss analysis. The knowledge of discuss analysis has been a useful instrument to analysis, to compare and to contrast messages in Christian handbills making it very easy to understand the expressions in the data. It has also shown that Christian handbills can be used to achieve brevity and clarity when pragmatic elements are applied on them. The discuss elements have played important roles in the decoding of conveyed Christian messages on the handbills.
Attempts have been made to allow the elements work hand-in-hand to decode meanings. Meanwhile, the analysis of each of the handbills brought to the limelight the deep meaning that can be deduced and the meanings that could not be discovered at the surface level. The strength of discuss function in bringing out the needed effects from Christian handbills is now understandable. One true fact observed herein is that without the presence of these elements i.e. world knowledge, illocutionary act, contexts, presupposition, implicature, intention, and perlocutionary act, graphological features, syntactic and semantic features, it would be difficult in getting to understand or comprehend Christian handbills of any sort.
Recommendations
In order for Christian handbills to perform their function effectively those who make use of them as tools for achieving whatever intention they deemed it fit must bear in mind that the reader(s) would always put their background knowledge into consideration especially were presupposition is needed. Therefore, Christian handbills and posters should be used informatively, instructively, briefly and with clarity which will help the overall understanding of the message by the readers.
REFERENCES
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