A Stylo- Pragmatic Appraisal of Lawal's Communicative Model Theory

Abstract

This paper is essentially an appraisal of Lawal’s Communicative Model Theory within the purview of stylistics and pragmatics. Any investigation of the stylistic and pragmatic factors that motivate language use is inevitably immersed in language users’ supremacy over the normative properties of language. One of the factors that promoted scholarly interest in pragmatics is the possibility that significant functional explanations can be given for linguistic facts. Like any study in pragmatics, research in stylistics investigates contextual factors that inform language use; in this regard, the meaning of an utterance – not its grammaticalness – is the major concern. This paper hinges on The Pragma-crafting Theory as a theoretical framework and concludes that although the Communicative Model Theory is bedeviled by its inability to explain certain dimensions of language use, it captures the contextual underpinnings of language use.