DISCOURSAL APPROXIMATION IN WEST AFRICAN ANGLOPHONE NEWSPAPER EDITORIALS

EWATA Thompson O.

Abstract

This study focused on the use of vague linguistic approximation elements in discourse with reference to time, amount and/or distance/location in words like: about, almost, approximately, around, between, nearly, or, roughly, some, and up to. Adopting Sperber and Wilson (1985) relevance theory framework and drawing on Corpus Linguistics methodologies, the study subjected a specialised corpus of the editorial genre of the West African Anglophone journalistic writing of 250 editorials (between 2017 and 2019) from five purposively sampled Anglophone online newspapers to AntConc® Concordance Tool. The approximating elements in the editorial corpus were: identified, classifiedinto types and their functions in the editorial discourse determined as well as compared the differences in usage between the countries; to prove that the use of the linguistic approximating elements in the editorials is an interactional strategy used by editorial writers for discourse approximating purposes. The study will be of importance to students of English as a second language, scholars of vague language and pragmatics of language, in particular and language scholars in general as it dwells on the practical use of language in human communication. 

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