Epistemicity and Evidentiality with Pragmatic Strategies in Newspaper Headlines on Spousal Conflicts in Nigeria

Abstract

The marriage institution is believed to be the smallest unit of society, although, it is at the same time one of the most conflict-ridden units, with   consequences of the conflict affecting diverse aspects of human existence. This has attracted scholarly attention from scholars of different disciplinary perspectives. However, the linguistic insight into spousal conflict has been scarce. This study therefore seeks to analyse newspaper  headlines  on  spousal  conflict  in  Nigeria  in  order  to  determine  the  stance-taking  and pragmatic strategies contained therein. Twenty newspaper headlines from four famous Nigerian online newspapers were downloaded from the websites of: Punch Newspapers, Vanguard News, The Guardian and Tribune Online Newspapers.  The headlines were transcribed and subjected to linguistic analysis using a triangulation of the stance theory by Biber et al. (1999) and Hyland (2005) as well as Odebunmi and  Oyelede's  (2016)  Pragmatic  Strategies. The  findings  reveal  two  stance  types:  Epistemic  and Evidential stances which were pragmatically realised through three pragmatic strategies: Reference to Facts, Evocation of Antecedence and Quoting/Naming Authority. The study concludes that newspaper headlines are projected from semantic defined stances realised through the pragmatic interests of the reporters.