LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 22:5 May 2022
ISSN 1930-2940

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         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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A Social Semiotic Discourse Analysis of Gender Expressions in
Selected Nigerian Newspapers

Peter Oyewole Makinde, M.A. and Lynda Uju Mgbodi, B.A.


Courtesy: 2012 Cartoon Calendar www.wsp.org

Abstract

Researches have been carried out on the understanding of sexism in communication. Sexism in communication also known as gender expression is a description of the manner in which languages inherently exclude a particular gender in discourse. This study investigates the nature of gender words in communication in selected Nigerian newspapers. The study adopts a qualitative research design. Data for the study are sourced from The Guardian, The Guardian Life Magazine and Daily Trust Newspapers, and websites - wps.org and katakata.org. The analysis was conducted through the application of Kress and Van Leeuwen's (1996:2006) visual semiotic which was drawn from Halliday’s (1978) Systematic Functional Linguistics approach to multimodal discourse analysis. It considers how an expression is composed of different modes in meaning making process. The first effort was to establish the direction of sexism in the Nigerian newspapers, which was observed to be female directed. Findings from the study show that there are still a good number of sexist expressions in Nigerian newspapers. It is also observed that the direction of the sexism is on the female gender.

Keywords: Nigerian newspapers, Discourse analysis, social semiotics, gender expressions, sexism.

1. Introduction

The concept of gender refers to the cultural and social attributes society ascribes to men and women particularly on the basis of sex. Sexism is the portrayal of one sex as naturally superior to the other. The study of gender inequality has reflected in the use of language (Newman et al, 2008; Ezeifeka and Osakwe 2013). Studies have also shown that gendered words have a bias towards a particular sex or social gender. The issue of gender relation has been a recurrent issue in socio-political, economic, and literal discourse (Oamen, 2019). Paulson (2017:112) describes sexist language or sexism in communication as linguistic expressions that indicate outright solidarity to a particular gender, which tend to underrate, exclude, or reduce the relevance of the opposite gender.

To find out how gender construction occurs on newspapers publications, the study of signs is required. This is usually defined as semiotics (Budiman, 2011). Academic American Encyclopedia (1989:17) describes newspapers as “an unbound publication issued at regular intervals that seeks to inform, analyze, influence and entertain through words or images”. An image is one form of human communication medium. Whereas communication can only occur when there is mean of sign, be it visual non-verbal or verbal, as disclosed by Sanders (2015). Subsequently, social semiotics is an approach to communication that seeks to understand how people communicate by a variety of means in a social setting. It is fundamentally important since it can shape social relation and society itself; this also includes the study of how communicators create text (wikipedia.org). Social semiotics, in the words of Sanders and Mann (2019), provides researchers with practical tools for systematically studying visual texts. Social semiotics therefore is a branch of the field of semiotics that aims to explain the making of meaning as a social practice.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Peter Oyewole Makinde, M.A.
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts
Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka
po.makinde@unizik.edu.ng
+234(0)8038337184

Lynda Uju Mgbodi, B.A.
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts
Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka
lyndiswag@gmail.com
+234(0)8134009961
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