CONTEXTS AND ACTS IN TODAY’S MARRIAGES: A CARTOON DIMENSION TO MARITAL CONFLICTS IN NIGERIA

Ibilate Waribo-Naye

Abstract


Marriage is a universal social institution recognised and respected all over the world and it is instrumental to a healthy society. It is nevertheless characterised by conflicts. The literature indicates studies on marital issues such as factors that contribute to social problems, diversities in marriage cultures, rituals, naming and so on. However, language scholars have not focused on the depiction of marriage in cartoons, especially the aspect of conflict among couples in this generation. This study, therefore, examines marital conflicts in the interactions of husbands and wives (Mr and Mrs) in Vanguard newspaper and their pragmatic implications for marital discourse in Nigeria. Mr and Mrs cartoons in the Vanguard newspaper have been identified as channels where conflicts among couples are brought to limelight through humour. The theory of pragmatic act by Jacob Mey was used to analyse pragmatic elements in the texts aided by linguistic features in foregrounding areas of conflict in the interactions. The data comprised 120 cartoons published at different times out of which 25 were purposively selected for analysis because of thematic recurrence. Ten practs: accusing, challenging, concealing, condemning, controlling, discontentment, eliciting, informing, threatening and warning were identified within three contexts, cultural, financial and social to principally interrogate norms and to subtly advocate gender equality. This shows that the cartoons do not merely convey utterances with semantic implications that provoke humour but also rely on contexts to perform acts in addition to understanding linguistic elements.

 

Article visualizations:

Hit counter

DOI

Keywords


Mr and Mrs, cartoon, context, pract, marital conflict

Full Text:

PDF

References


Paul Kyalo, (2012). A Reflection on the African Traditional Values of Marriage and Sexuality. International Journal of Academic Research in Progressive Education and Development. Vol. 1(2):211-210.

Lisa M. Dillon, Nicole Nowak, Glenn E. Weisfeld, 2015. Sources of Marital Conflict in Five Cultures. Evolutionary Psychology: 14747049. Retrieved December 2017 from http/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/…/255603…

Holtgraves, T.M. 2002. Language as Social Action: Social Psychology and Language Use. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.: New Jersey.

Mey, J. (2009). Pragmatic Act. In: Mey Jacob (Ed) Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics. Elsevier, Oxford. Capone, A. (2005). Pragmemes: A study with reference to English and Italian. Journal of Pragmatics. 37:1355-1371.

Mey, J.L. (2001). Pragmatics: an introduction. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell

Odebunmi, A. (2006). A pragmatic reading of Yerima's proverbs in 'Yemoja Attahiru' and 'Dry Leaves on Ukan Trees'. Intercultural Pragmatics 3, 2: 153–170.

Odebuunmi, A. (2007). Pragmatic Functions of Crisis – Motivated Proverbs in Ola Rotimi's The Gods Are Not to Blame. Linguistik online 33/1.

Sokari S. and Ugwu E.N. (2013). Metaphor as Pragmatic Act: a Pragmatic Analysis of the Reporting of Selected Discourses on the Niger Delta Crisis of Nigeria. Journal of the Nigeria English Studies Association. Vol 16(1):87-101.

Adeniji A. and Osunbade, N. (2014). Pragmatic Acts in Characters’ Utterances in Ahmed Yerima’s Mojagbe. Research on Humanities and Social Sciences. Vol.4(8):11-20.

Sunday, A.B. and Akindele, H.O.F. (2013). The pragmatics of spousal communication: the case of Mr and Mrs cartoon series. In A. Kehinde and A. Odebunmi (Eds.) Language, Literature and Discourse: a Festschrift in Honour of Prof. A. L. Oyeleye. Lincoln Europa. Pp 267- 282.

Akin Adejuwon and Shina Alimi. (2011). Cartoons as Illustration: Political Process in Nigeria. The Journal of Pan African Studies, Vol.4(3):57-76.

Sani, I., Abdullah, M.H., Ali A.M and Abdullah F.I. (2012). Linguistic analysis on the construction of satire in Nigerian political cartoons: The example of newspaper cartoons. Journal of Media and Communication Studies Vol. 4(3):52-59.

Brown, N.J. Edim, O.E. Etteh J.D. and Ashibel, P.A. (2016). Cartoon Application in Communication and Social Mobilization in Nigeria's Bring Back Our Girls: The way Forward. International Journal of International Relations, Media and Mass Communication Studies Vol.2(3):1-11.

Shaikh, N.Z., Tariq R., and Najeeb-us-Saqlain. (2016). Cartoon war….. A political dilemma!

A semiotic analysis of political cartoons. Journal of Media Studies Vol. 31(1):74-92.

Febisola O.B. (2013). Verisimilitude in Editorial Cartoons from Punch Newspaper: A Pragmatics Analysis. Language in India Vol. 13(5):43-66.

Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Inya, O. (2012). ‘Defending a Thesis’: Pragmatic Acts in Contemporary Christian Apologetics. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 2(10):2016-2023.

Capone, A. (2005). Pragmemes: A study with reference to English and Italian. Journal of Pragmatics. Vol. 37: 1355-1371.

Odebunmi, A. (2006). A Pragmatic Reading of Yerima's Proverbs in 'Yemoja Attahiru' and 'Dry Leaves on Ukan Trees'. Intercultural Pragmatics 3(2):153–170.

Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and Power. London: Longman.

Odebunmi, Akin. (2008) Pragmatic Functions of Crisis-Motivated Proverbs in Ola Rotimi’s The Gods are not to Blame. Linguistik Online 33

Medube, O. (2002). Language and Ideology in Nigerian Cartoons. Linguistic LAUD Agency. Series A: General & Theoretical Papers:1-20.

Ogbo, S.O. and Nuhu, T.N. (2016). Satire as Tool of Political Cartoons in the Nigerian National Dailies: A Critical Discourse Analysis. European Scientific Journal Vol.12(29): 1857 – 7881.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2018 Ibilate Waribo-Naye

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The research works published in this journal are free to be accessed. They can be shared (copied and redistributed in any medium or format) and\or adapted (remixed, transformed, and built upon the material for any purpose, commercially and\or not commercially) under the following terms: attribution (appropriate credit must be given indicating original authors, research work name and publication name mentioning if changes were made) and without adding additional restrictions (without restricting others from doing anything the actual license permits). Authors retain the full copyright of their published research works and cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the license terms are followed.

Copyright © 2017-2023. European Journal of Literature, Language and Linguistics Studies (ISSN 2559 - 7914 / ISSN-L 2559 - 7914). All rights reserved.

This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library. All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms. All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and standards formulated by Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003) and  Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Copyrights of the published research works are retained by authors.