Dr. EZENWOALI WISDOM
Publication Title Ambiguities of power and leadership responsibilities in Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah
Publication Type journal
Publisher Agbor Journal of Language and Literature
Publication Authors Wisdom Ezenwoali
Year Published 2017-08-12
Abstract Nigerians have constantly lamented over the poor leadership style in the government of the day; and for many years, many have condemned the various regimes of government right from the inception of independence in 1960. Our leaders (past and present) have been constantly described as wolves in the sheep's garment who have failed the nation. It has now come to a point where most of the human elements of this nation have lost hope on the government of the day and have faced the situation in various forms: to some, it is violence, and to others it is a resignation to fate while many have decided to join the crew. Most experts have approached the issue wrongly by offering criticisms of the government without a reworking of the psyche of these leaders. This paper, therefore, argues that the solution to the national problem of bad leadership and underdevelopment lies with a re-evaluation of the true essence of power and leadership responsibilities; and an understanding of the fact that power and life are ephemeral. It draws references from Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah and some relevant works of Literature. Keywords: Ambiguity of Power, Leadership, Responsibilities, Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah.
Publication Title Code choices as catalysts in interpersonal relations in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie?s novels
Publication Type journal
Publisher Working Papers: A Journal of English Studies
Publication Authors Wisdom Ezenwoali & Augustine Aikoriogie
Year Published 2020-04-15
Abstract Speakers in conversations either stick to one code, or alternate from one to another depending
on a number of factors. This practice is generally known as code switching or code mixing. In
multilingual societies like Nigeria, participants in speech events have always had to choose
from the various codes available to them communicating with one another depending on
factors like the social relationship between the participants (addressee based code switching),
the domain of speech (situational code switching), as well as the social act (the ideology) the
speaker intends to achieve (ideological or metaphorical code switching). Ideologies of social
distancing and social closeness stare us when we read the novels of Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie. In this paper, it is argued that although most theories of code switching and code
mixing link it to multilingualism. However, this paper introduces the pragmatic window.
Hence, this research applies the principle of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine
the ideological frameworks projected through code switching and mixing in Adichie's novels.
It was observed that characters switch codes to express a certain ideology such as cultural or
emotional closeness and distance.
Keywords: CDA, Code switching, ideology, interpersonal relation, Adichie's novels
Publication Title A Lexical Pragmatic Analysis of Proverbs in Femi Osofisan?s Midnight Hotel.
Publication Type journal
Publisher Okwo: University of Port Harcourt Journal of Language and Literature
Publication Authors Augustine Aikoriogie & Wisdom Ezenwoali
Year Published 2021-08-12
Abstract This essay is a lexical pragmatic analysis of the proverbs in Osofisan?s Midnight Hotel. It evaluates their effects and contributions to the proposition of moral and socio-political decadence in the society. It uses Carston?s theory of explicit content- specifically, lexical pragmatics. The playwright deploys twenty-five proverbs in the text from which ten pertinent ones are analyzed to show how they enhance the interpretation of the speaker?s propositions within the text, and the playwright?s propositions within the context of the Nigerian situation. It is observed that consciously or otherwise, other characters in the text narrow or widen the semantic scope of lexical items in the proverb to interpret Alatise?s utterances. Similarly, the reader does this pragmatic inference to get the meanings of the play. Thus in Osofisan?s Midnight Hotel, modulating the lexical constituents in the proverbs deployed, reveals the playwright?s castigation of moral decadence such as: marital infidelity, sexual promiscuity and socio-political corruption, and the evils surrounding elections in the society. Keywords: moral; socio-political; lexical pragmatics; Midnight Hotel; Osofisan.
Publication Title Conversions as Semantic Oddities in Dennis Brutus' Poetry
Publication Type journal
Publisher The Journal of Communicative English
Publication Authors Wisdom Ezenwoali & Esther Nkiruka Ugwu
Year Published 2019-03-13
Abstract All oppressive governments are not only anti-human but also bizarre as they endanger the
survival of humanity: a contrast of the very purpose for which they are set up. This paper
addresses the prevalent semantic oddities we find in Dennis Brutus' collections of poetry. By
applying Jan Mukarovsky's theory of foregrounding and the concept of deviation as
expounded by Geoffrey Leech, we interpreted and unearthed the essence of the semantic
oddities (in the form of conversions) which Brutus uses in his poetry: the South African
apartheid regime and its absurdities are presented to readers through strikingly odd use of
certain linguistic features. These semantic oddities are used to show the bizarreness of the
oppressive apartheid.
Keywords: Semantic oddity, conversion, Dennis Brutus, poetry, apartheid.
Publication Title Mutual contextual beliefs in memes disambiguation and interpretation.
Publication Type journal
Publisher Faculty of Arts, University of Delta, Agbor, Delta State, Nigeria.
Publication Authors Wisdom Ezenwoali and Sylvanus Uwamaka Ojumah
Year Published 2023-06-01
Abstract A visit to social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Tiktok, Telegram, Twitter, and others often shock us with a lot of hilarious and ambiguous memes. Behind the fun and ambiguity that come with these memes is largesse of unexpressed meanings capable of being realised through a pragmatic analysis using the Speech Act theory of Mutual Contextual Beliefs (MCBs) as proposed by Kent Bach and Robert M. Harnish. This study hopes to evaluate the role of contextual beliefs in the disambiguation and meaningful interpretation of social media memes. For space, eight purposively selected memes constitute the data for the study. The study posits that participants in social media discourse, that is, the originators of the media texts and the readers need share some mutual contextual knowledge and beliefs to ensure effective communication between them. It is further argued that though there might be flouts of the conversational maxims of H. P Grice in these memes, applying the theory of MCBs in analysing them will resolve the flouts presenting us with cases of indirectness strategies, metaphors and implicatures. The paper concludes that a keen study of the memes reveal the achievement of speech acts like warning, requesting, refusal, resistance, encouragement text disambiguation through indirectness strategies like implicatures and irony.