Language, Power, and Gender: Insights from Nigerian Print Media
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54536/ajmri.v4i3.4039Keywords:
Gender Ideology, Gender Issues, Nigerian Print Media, Political DiscourseAbstract
This study investigated gender issues published between 2014 and 2016 in The Guardian and Vanguard with a view to uncovering the interactions between linguistic devices and the underlying ideologies in discourses on gender relations. The theoretical framework was a synthesis of insights from Faiclough’s (1995) model of Critical Discourse Analysis and Halliday’s (2004) Systemic Functional Linguistics. Out of a total 50 news reports, 14 news reports were purposively selected and subjected to linguistic and descriptive analyses. The Guardian and Vanguard constructed women as equal to men in the public arena and encouraged women not to participate in politics for selfish reasons but for a national cause. These ideological constructions in the newspapers were projected through material processes, relational processes, and lexical choices. These linguistic devices revealed that the womenfolk have always been contributing to political issues in the country. The two newspapers have similar ideological leanings on gender issues in Nigeria. They both projected the womenfolk as nation builders. There is a dynamic interaction between gender ideologies and linguistic devices in the newspaper reports on gender issues in political discourse. Awareness of this interaction is essential to understanding media reports on gender issues in Nigeria.
Downloads
References
Abdulaziz, M. H. (1996). Transitivity in Swahili. East African Languages and Dialects, 5. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
Babatunde, S. T., & Osuolale-Ajayi, I. T. (2015). A non-verbal analysis of selected female-based advertisements in Punch newspaper in Nigeria. Journal of the Nigeria English Studies Association (JNESA), 17, 94–106.
Daniel, I. O. (2011). Ideology, power and pictures of women. Journal of the Nigeria English Studies Association (JNESA), 14(2), 112–131.
Dickson, E. E., Alobo, E. E., & Egbe, I. J. (2014). Women, gender equality in Nigeria: A critical analysis of socio-economic and political (gender) issues. Journal of Research in Peace, Gender and Development, 4(1), 15–20.
Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London: Edward Arnold.
Fairclough, N. (2003). Analyzing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge.
Fowler, R. (1987). The intervention of the media in the reproduction of power. In R. Wodak, T. A. van Dijk, & D. Zavala (Eds.), Approaches to discourse, poetics and psychiatry (pp. 265–279). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Gotzsche, H. (2009). Systemic functional grammar. In S. Chapman & C. Routledge (Eds.), Key ideas in linguistics and the philosophy of language (pp. 142–156). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1967). Notes on transitivity and theme in English, Parts 1–3. Journal of Linguistics, 3(1), 37–81
Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1991). Towards probabilistic interpretations. In E. Ventola (Ed.), Functional and systemic linguistics: Approaches and uses (pp. 39–61). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Halliday, M. A. K. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed., rev. by C. M. I. M. Matthiessen). London: Edward Arnold.
Ibrahim, M. (2015). Gender sentiments in Nigerian primary English textbooks: A critical analysis. Journal of the Nigeria English Studies Association (JNESA), 17, 84–93.
Kress, G. (1983). Linguistic and ideological transformations in news reporting. In H. Davis & P. Walton (Eds.), Language, image, media (pp. 120–138). Great Britain: Basil Blackwell.
Litosseliti, L. (2002). “Head to head”: Gendered repertoires in newspaper arguments. In L. Litosseliti & J. Sunderland (Eds.), Gender identity and discourse analysis (pp. 129–148). Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Nwaolikpe, O. N. (2014). Representation of women’s images in Nigerian newspapers. New Media and Mass Communication, 27, 41–46.
O’Halloran, K. (2003). Critical discourse analysis and language cognition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Ogungbemi, O. (2023). Literature as resistance: The pragmatics of ecological advocacy in Oil on Water by Helon Habila. Jurnal Arbitrer, 10(4), 360–370.
Ogungbemi, O. (2024). Nature speaks: Agency and environment in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road. Jurnal Arbitrer, 11(2), 186–195.
Ogungbemi, O. D. (2016a). The ideological square and transitivity in the poetry of Remi Raji Oyelade. Journal of Linguistics and Language in Education, 10(2), 14–32.
Ogungbemi, O. D. (2016b). Dissecting J. P. Clark’s Ozidi: A syntactic perspective. The African Symposium, 15(3), 24–28.
Ogungbemi, O. D. (2018). Whose Boko Haram? A critical discourse analysis of print media news on terrorism in Nigeria. In E. Adegoju & A. Akinwale (Eds.), Academic writing for Africa: The journal article (Vol. 15, pp. 61–74). Ibadan: Kraft Books.
Ogungbemi, O. D., & Okunsanya, Y. A. (2016). The parasite, the deprived and the slanderer: Ideologies and identity construction in selected 2014 national conference discourse in the Nigerian print media. Papers in English and Linguistics, 17, 185–199.
Ogungbemi, O., & Bamgbose, G. (2021). Imagery in Fuji music: Saheed Osupa as an examplar. Ihafa: A Journal of African Studies, 12(1), 154–176.
Ogunsiji, A., & Ogungbemi, O. D. (2016). The portrait of the political leaders in Niyi Osundare’s Random Blues: An exercise in critical stylistics. In A. Odebunmi, H. Osisanwo, S. Bodunde, & S. Ekpe (Eds.), Grammar, applied linguistics and society: A Festschrift for Wale Osisanwo (pp. 375–392). Ile-Ife: OAU Press.
Olaluwoye, L., & Ogungbemi, O. D. (2020). A sociolinguistic investigation of toilet graffiti among male students of the University of Ibadan. NIU Journal of Social Sciences, 5(4), 167–175.
Pisarek, W. (1983). “Reality” East and West. In H. Davis & P. Walton (Eds.), Language, image, media (pp. 105–119). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Richardson, J. E. (2007). Analyzing newspapers: An approach from critical discourse analysis. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sahragard, R., & Davatgarzadeh, G. (2010). The representation of social actors in Interchange Third Edition series: A critical discourse analysis. The Journal of Teaching Language Skills (JLTS), 2(1), 67–89.
Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: A resource book for students. London & New York: Routledge.
Toolan, M. J. (2001). Narrative: A critical linguistic introduction. New York: Routledge.
van Dijk, T. A. (1991). Racism and the press. London: Routledge.
Weiss, G., & Wodak, R. (2003). Critical discourse analysis: Theory and interdisciplinarity in critical discourse analysis. London: Palgrave.
Widdowson, H. G. (2004). Text, context, pretext: Critical issues in discourse analysis. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Wodak, R. (1999). Critical discourse analysis at the end of the 20th century. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32(2), 185–193.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Damilola Ofoegbu
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
