The Pragmatic Acts in Selected Nigerian Print Media Reports on the Abducted Chibok School Girls

Abstract:

A news report is a form of writer-reader negotiated meaning and contextual consideration of language, structure, and verbal codes. Thus, the study explored the various pragmatic acts performed in news reports on the abducted Chibok girls in Nigeria, especially the construction of acts or meaning through verbal codes. Using Mey’s (2001) aspects of pragmatic acts as the theoretical framework undergirded the study, a total of thirteen (13) verbal reports were purposively selected from three Nigerian newspapers (The Nation, Daily Trust & The Punch) and analysed from the points of pragmatic acts, Searle’s (1969) classification of Speech acts, implicature and presupposition. The study revealed that instantiated acts (practs) are pragmatically patterned to perform some acts of informing, reporting to the audience, stating the fact in the news reports on the abducted Chibok girls and playing some roles in social change. The study also revealed that The Nation, Dail Trust and The Punch deploy their news reports through implicit practs of castigating the spate of insecurity and condemning the ineptitude of security agents towards rescuing the abducted Chibok girls. The study also showed that the preponderant occurrences of factive presupposition were due to the fact that the assumptions being made about the news of the abducted Chibok girls are actual, real and easily embedded in the news report. The study concludes that Nigerian newspapers play a role in setting the boundaries of what is talked about; shaping social issues happening around the nation and exposing them to their readership.