A Pragmatic Analysis of Selected Obituaries In Nigerian Newspapers

Abstract

Since the inception of Pragmatics as an independent approach to meaning has independent linguistic study, the approach to meaning has encountered an enormous change. Meaning has been perceived beyond the sentence level. The aim of this paper was to do a pragmatic analysis of selected obituaries in Nigerian newspapers; Nigerian Tribune, The Nation and The Punch. These papers were purposively selected because obituaries were regularly published and publicized through them in a mournful manner and this called for a critical linguistic study by analyzing the mournful use of language with a view to finding out their effects on the decoders. The study of language has been extended significantly beyond mere description of linguistic properties to the various ways which individual communicators convey meanings in different socio-cultural contexts. The theoretical framework for this study is pragmatics. This is because pragmatics has been able to account for social meanings and give new insights to the understanding of literary texts and thus, helping in formulating strategies for the teaching and learning of language. Three Nigerian newspapers namely Nigerian Tribune, The Nation and the Punch were purposively selected for data collection. Relevant texts on obituaries were extracted from them and were critically analyzed for the purpose of this study. It was found out that relatives and friends of the deceased publicized the death of the deceased as memories and sympathy for the departed souls. It is recommended that obituaries should be used for the teaching and learning of English as a Second Language because funerals and obituaries are a significant aspect of African culture.