DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF CHRISTIAN HANDBILLS IN UGHELLI
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
COVER PAGE i
TITLE PAGE ii
CERTIFICATION iii
DEDICATION iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v
TABLE OF CONTENTS vii
ABSTRACT ix
CHAPTER ONE 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study 1
1.2 Statement of the Problem 5
1.3 Purpose of the Study 6
1.4 Research Questions 7
1.5 Significant of the Study 7
1.6 Methodology 8
1.7 Scope of the Study 9
1.8 Limitations of the Study 9
CHAPTER TWO 10
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
2.1 Overview of Discourse Analysis 10
2.2 Types of Discourse Analysis 15
2.3 Functions of Discourse Analysis 17
2.4 Overview of Handbills 19
2.5 Benefits of Christian Handbills 21
2.6 The Importance of Handbills in Christianity 23
2.7 Discourse Analysis of Christian Handbill 25
CHAPTER THREE 28
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Study Area 28
3.2 Research Design 28
3.3 Sample Population 29
3.4 Sampling Technique 29
3.5 Research Procedure 29
CHAPTER FOUR 30
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
4.1 Introduction 30
4.2 Presentation of Data 30
4.3 Data Analysis 31
4.4 Discussion of Findings 50
CHAPTER FIVE 52
SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.1 Summary 52
5.2 Conclusion 54
5.3 Recommendations 55
References 56
ABSTRACT
Christian handbills are one of the leading non-verbal means of communication in the society today especially the church handbills and posters. Technically put, posters are very important forms of visual communication. It presents picture(s) with meanings lying behind it. However, there exist some graphosyntactic errors, lexical, syntactic features and semantic features used in Christian handbills. The problem of grapho-syntactic errors contravene syntactic and graphological norms of the language and are not recognized as such by most people. The errors are gradually and unfortunately becoming standard forms of usage for most Nigerians. Ten (10) Christian handbills selected from ten (10) different churches were collected between January and May, 2016. The non-randomized method was used as the sampling technique while the research procedure employed analysis of linguistic aspects and features such as; graphological function, lexical, pragmatic tools, syntactic and semantic tools. Results obtained from this study revealed that Christian handbills play significant roles in effective communication. Hence, the findings from this study have become an instrument for achieving background knowledge in language of information as contained in Christian handbills.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Communication as a means transmission of ideas, thoughts or feelings is in two major categories-the verbal and non verbal communications. It is the purposeful activity of information exchange between two or more participants in order to convey or receive the intended meanings through a shared system of signs and semiotic rules. The most common one used for interaction in human societies is the non verbal such as; handbills, posters and bill boards (Barnlund, 2008). Language is a sort of code system, a carrier of information which is capable of transmitting intended meaning whatsoever. It also reveals man’s socio-cultural beliefs and thoughts. The importance of language is for easy communication, expression and enlightenment. The traditional linguists believe that language has an intended meaning and that the recipient has only to understand that meaning by interpreting it to make communication work. In that case, the above information given about language means that we can deduce different meanings from the same language used in different contexts (Burke, 1999).
