Participant’s Roles and Cognitive Relations in Niger Delta Conflict News Discourse

Chuka Fred Ononye,Ahmed Yunana,Olaosun Ibrahim Esan

doi:10.1177/21582440211023149

Chuka Fred Ononye, Ahmed Yunana + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211023149

Copy DOI

Abstract

Media studies on Niger Delta (ND) conflict discourse have largely utilized stylistic, pragmatic, and critical discourse analytical tools in exploring media representation of news actors and ideologies in news texts but have not accommodated such issues as participants’ roles and cognitive relations in the discourse. This paper analyses the contexts of ND conflict news reporting with a view to revealing not only the participant’s role relations involved, but also the lexico-semantic resources they are characterized by. Forty newspaper reports on ND conflicts (20 from four ND-based newspapers— The Tide, New Waves, The Pointer and Pioneer, and 20 from four national newspapers— The Punch, The Guardian, Vanguard and THISDAY), published between 2003 and 2009, were sampled and subjected to discourse analysis, with insights from van Dijk’s context models and aspects of relational semantics. Four types of role were identified, viz. interactional (embracing the participants in conflict), communicative (relating to the production roles), social (involving group membership), and instrumental (dealing with the entities utilized in actualizing specific goals). The cognitive foci of these roles are associated with participants’ goals and beliefs, and these inform the participants’ position and hence role in the conflict events. Linguistically, the interactional and social roles are marked by synonymous and converse lexical items, while the communicative and instrumental roles are indexed by homonymous and antonymous lexical features. The findings corroborate the fact that there is an interaction between participant roles and cognitive relations in the ND conflict events reported in Nigerian newspapers.

Highlights

The Niger Delta (ND), being in the South-south region of Nigeria covering some 70,000 kilometers (Rowell et al, 2005, p. 9), yields an estimated 2, 500,000 (402,000 m3) barrels of crude oil daily
This paper set out to investigate the participant’s roles and cognitive relations reflected in Nigerian print media reports on ND conflicts
It explored the lexico-semantic choices that index the role relations with respect to the conflictual events reported in Nigerian newspapers

Summary

Introduction

The Niger Delta (ND), being in the South-south region of Nigeria covering some 70,000 kilometers (Rowell et al, 2005, p. 9), yields an estimated 2, 500,000 (402,000 m3) barrels of crude oil daily. 9), yields an estimated 2, 500,000 (402,000 m3) barrels of crude oil daily. This accounts for over 95% of Nigeria’s crude oil and gas resources, and 92% of the country’s foreign exchange earnings In order to address the peculiarities of the problems confronting their region, the ND peoples have embarked on a long and continued struggle for self-determination. This is aimed at controlling the resources from their “fatherland” (Darah, 2008). The physical armed conflicts that ensued involve two major participants or groups in the discourse; namely, the Federal Government of Nigeria (including the Joint Military Task Forces and other officials) and the ND (comprising the different militant groups and their sympathizers)

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion