Semantic and Lexis Used in the Selected Household Adverts Aired in the Television Media House in Nigeria
Chapter One
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The objectives of the study;
- To highlight the peculiar use of language in adverts
- To acknowledge the presence of style even in advertisement
- To explore the various stylistic features employed in these adverts that help to actualize meaning
- To show how certain features such as signs, miming, drama(micro or macro) that are employed in adverts are significant and symbolic in the actualization of meaning
- To ascertain the differences, if any, in adverts that concern a certain age grade.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
WHAT IS LEXICO-SEMANTICS
The theoretical assumption that underpins, this word is the concept of lexical semantics word meaning. Baldwin (2007:1) lexical as “the study of what individual lexical item why they mean what they do, how we represent all and where the combined interpretation for an utterance comes from”. The word is one of the few concepts in for which an adequate definition is yet to be. According to the difficulties in classifying the nature of the word are largely due to the fact that the term “word” is used in a variety of senses, which usually, are not clearly distinguished. Lexico-semantic as an adjective term refers to relationship between the lexicon (word) of a language (that is its root-word and word stems) and the various semantic categories created by the human semantic divide the world of up differently interm of what sort of concept are made into words and how the meaning of those words reflect the reality around us (Ruth Kempso 1975). Bloomfield (1933) and meillet (1912), were some of indeterminacies about the notion of the word. A word could be “a minimal free or “a unit of meaning” which may comprise the elements that are smaller or larger than the word(e.g. phrases or idioms), whose meaning may not be appeared from the constituent words. Given the above discrepancies, linguist use the term “Lexeme” or “Lexical item” to an item or more than one word, to the “word” in this sense of abstract vocabulary item using the term “Lexeme”. For example the forms show, shows, showed, shown, showing are different realization of the Lexeme SHOW. They all share a core element of meaning although they are spelled and pronounced differently (Finch 2000). Like a sentence, words have internal structure while sentence are but up from concatenation of individual words, words are constructed from morphemes, the “minimal meaning bearing unit” (O Grady et al, 1989:92) which inter into lexical and constructional relations with one another depending on context sensitivity or sense specify. The starting point of the theory of lexical semantic is decomposing lexical meaning in terms of semantic primitives, entailment relations and truth conditional, etc by providing specific complete meaning for individual words. How this, words are understood first before their meaning could be an analyzed. In this study, we adopt the assumption that Lexemes are words (inspite of the claim that they do not correspond exactly to words) with recognizable Lexical meaning.
ADVERTISEMENT IN NIGERIA
Advertising is a strategy used in calling the attention of the general public to a particular product or services with the aim of inducing them to patronize the commodity (Ariga 1984). Advertising also has to do with the techniques and practices used in bringing products, services and even opinions to public notice such that the public can react in a certain way to the Advertised commodity of the various scholarly considerations of the negative impact of Advertisements, since it is believed to be mainly geared towards monopoly and enrichment of the capitalist (Ariaga 1984:54, Janus 1982:4-6), it is, however, obvious that, it has become a significant factor in negotiating between consumer and the product/services. in the ancient and medieval world. The period prominently uses the person to person mode of Advertising which obviously lacks wide coverage. the whole essence of the existence the particular product, inform and educate the people on how to use the product, improve the quality of the product through competition and consumer research. According to (Ude1996:6) therefore, Advertising dose not only help to sell ideas, goods and services through persuasion, it also tries to persuade with the emphasis on the qualities of the product which is hopefully desirable.
TYPES OF ADVERTISEMENTS
As a result of the group of people targeted by the product, consumer/retailer advert are used. Odebunmi (2007:103). Identifies five types of advert which include the following:-
- Retailer Advert
- Consumer Advert
- Industrial Advert
- Financial Advert
- Classified Advert
While consumer adverts invite members of public to purchase goods and services, retailer Advert serve that consumer should buy the product (see Adegbija (1982), Oyele (1997), Odebunmi (2007). Whilethe other types educated; for instance, public service in English; ourchosenadverts that are, consumer/retailer is meant for the general public whether slowly or highly placed. Hence, the advertisers wish to cover wider audience. However in situation where brothers on the educated and none educated (for example, NAFDAC adverts which bother the health of the Nigerian people) a language which gives room for more audience is used for instance, NP or some other Nigerian indigenous languages. NP is used in advertisement today to sell out human and material resources to the public. There is a variety of NP which Elugbe and Omamor see as incorrect English: that is, that of zebrudayya the hero of “masquerade” (Bamigbose 1995:13 calls this broken English). Zeburudayya’s language has been so successful that is creates fun and is often employed by giant and multinational companies. Infact the federal government uses his especially when touchy matters of public concern are considered. The Obasanjo regime once used him when the regime was the masses were against the policy to be supported. Scholars including crystal and Davy (1989), crystal (1987), Ude (1996), Adejumo and Odebunmi (1997), Goggard (1998), Holden (2001), morris (2005), Oyekola(2005) among others, have taken a bold step in to the field of advertising. For instance, crystal and Davy (1969:218-226) carry out a study on the language of television and point adverts. However, their work is just suggested to for a critical survey of the language of Advertising Ude (1996) carries out a speech act analysis of some public service advertisement in Nigeria. Hence, it’s restricted to public service advertisements and only carries out a speech act analysis. Oyekola (2005) the stylistics devises in selected Nigerian point adverts and particularly from the newspaper.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research design
The researcher used descriptive research survey design in building up this project work the choice of this research design was considered appropriate because of its advantages of identifying attributes of a large population from a group of individuals. The design was suitable for the study as the study sought a semantic and lexis used in the selected household advert aired in the television media house in Nigeria
Sources of data collection
Data were collected from two main sources namely:
(i)Primary source and
(ii)Secondary source
Primary source:
These are materials of statistical investigation which were collected by the research for a particular purpose. They can be obtained through a survey, observation questionnaire or as experiment; the researcher has adopted the questionnaire method for this study.
Secondary source:
These are data from textbook Journal handset etc. they arise as byproducts of the same other purposes. Example administration, various other unpublished works and write ups were also used.
Population of the study
Population of a study is a group of persons or aggregate items, things the researcher is interested in getting information on semantic and lexis used in the selected household advert aired in the television media house in Nigeria. 200 staff of selected TV stations in Abuja were selected randomly by the researcher as the population of the study.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION ANALYSIS INTERPRETATION OF DATA
Introduction
Efforts will be made at this stage to present, analyze and interpret the data collected during the field survey. This presentation will be based on the responses from the completed questionnaires. The result of this exercise will be summarized in tabular forms for easy references and analysis. It will also show answers to questions relating to the research questions for this research study. The researcher employed simple percentage in the analysis.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Introduction
It is important to ascertain that the objective of this study was to ascertain semantic and lexis used in the selected household adverts aired in the television media in Nigeria. In the preceding chapter, the relevant data collected for this study were presented, critically analyzed and appropriate interpretation given. In this chapter, certain recommendations made which in the opinion of the researcher will be of semantic and lexis used in the selected household adverts aired in the television
Summary
This study was on semantic and lexis used in the selected household adverts aired in the television media in Nigeria. Five objectives were raised which included: To highlight the peculiar use of language in adverts, to acknowledge the presence of style even in advertisement, to explore the various stylistic features employed in these adverts that help to actualize meaning, to show how certain features such as signs, miming, drama(micro or macro) that are employed in adverts are significant and symbolic in the actualization of meaning, to ascertain the differences, if any, in adverts that concern a certain age grade. In line with these objectives, two research hypotheses were formulated and two null hypotheses were posited. The total population for the study is 200 staff of selected TV stations in Abuja. The researcher used questionnaires as the instrument for the data collection. Descriptive Survey research design was adopted for this study. A total of 133 respondents made broadcasters, directors, producers and marketers were used for the study. The data collected were presented in tables and analyzed using simple percentages and frequencies
Conclusion
We notice the fact that indicators contain mainly elements of quantity, without taking into account the fact that watching TV is leisure, on the one hand, and that, on the other hand, it involves a series of cultural and educational needs. Therefore, aspects such as informative enrichment or knowing the public, educating it, its satisfaction or dissatisfaction felt as a result of watching TV are not a part of the presented and used indicators by TV channels. So, we propose the use of certain indicators of quality in order to evaluate television audience, indicators which should be used by all TV channels, because it is an issue of interest for all those who pay for advertising space
Recommendation
The researcher recommends that future researches can be carried out on radio and television adverts, usage of indigenous language in Milo, Indomie, Amstel Malta, Bournvita, Peak milk, Maltina and many others advertisements.
REFERENCES
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