DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF CORRUPTION REPORTAGE IN NIGERIAN DAILIES

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0 Background to the Study

Corruption is a natural phenomenon; hence it has become a household name in modern society. In fact, the existence of ‘corruption’ dates back to the fourth century BC (Bardhan, npn). Noonan (235) says …corruption, it seems, is everywhere a “world of evil and disease”. In his own opinion, Klitgaar (21) posits that corruption not only distorts social, political and economic systems,but also illuminates crucial problems around organizations and their managements. It is a concept that has dominated discussions in social science disciplines especially political science and sociology, (e.g. Heidenheimer and Johnston, 2001; Nye, 1967; Warren, 2004; Kaufmann, 1997; Tanzi, 1998; Jain, 2001; Khondker, 2006; Bassey et al, 2013; Rose-Ackerman, 1999; Nuijten and Anders, 2007). There is widespread agreement that corruption represents one of the most pressing issues facing business and society today (Riyan, in Breit1).

Broadly speaking, some scholars view ‘corruption’ as a dysfunctional trait of individuals, organizations and societies. By illuminating key struggles, conflicts and contradictions embedded in different understandings of corruption, they advocate a view of corruption as a socially constructed phenomenon. (e.g. Chibnall and Sounders 89; Grannovetter, npn). More specifically, the discussions accentuate an acute aspect largely ignored by corruption scholars; namely: the role of language and discourse in efforts to make sense of and give sense to corruption. They enable explorations into the discursive processes through which specific notions of corruption are articulated, reproduced and transformed (Breit 1-2).

This dissertation however, is hinged on the analysis of the media reportage of corruption proceedings between 2015 and 2016 in Nigeria. The issue of corruption is not a myth to a

country like Nigeria, especially now that it has been rated among the most corrupt countries in the World. Nigeria is the number 136th least corrupt nation out of 175 countries, according to the 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index (Transparency International, 2016). The fight against corruption and media reportage span through successive administrations in Nigeria. It started with the first military coup in 1966 and since then, it has been part of the successive administrations including the present Muhammadu Buhari’s government. Based on this, the role the media play in their reportage of court proceedings especially between the period of 2015-2016 cannot be undermined; hence, the need for assessment. This, therefore, motivates this study. In addition, the role of the media is to serve as ‘watchdogs’ of the society and thus is expected to uncover and report problematic events especially in the recent time where Nigerians hear more of high profiled cases like the corrupt cases involving the Senate president, the former National Security Adviser, former Governors etcetera. The study will achieve this using Critical Discourse Analysis approach.

Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) is a discourse methodology that studies language in relation to social issues and practices. Discourses are prevailing ways of knowing, valuing and experiencing the world. Discourses are extensively used in everyday contexts for building power and knowledge, for regulation and normalization, for the progression of new knowledge and power relations and for hegemony.

One may suppose that “discourse” is a more extensive term than “text.” According to Fairclough, “I shall use the term discourse to refer to the whole process of social interaction of which a text is just a part.” (24) Given the power of written and spoken texts (from either print or electronic media), Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is instrumental for describing, interpreting and critiquing social life reflected in texts .Van Dijk (19) adds that CDA is related to studying and analyzing written texts and spoken words to disclose the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality and bias and how these sources are initiated, maintained, reproduced, and transformed within specific social, economic, political and historical contexts . This, therefore, serves as the framework upon which this study is built for ease of understanding the papers Ideological Discursive Formation (IDF).

1.1 Statement of the Problem

Various researches on media reportage have been conducted by linguists especially in the field of stylistics or literary linguistics, only a few have investigated Critical Discourse Analysis as a tool at the time of this research.This study will, therefore, examine the Nigerian media reportage on corruption related proceedings using ‘Ideology,’ ‘power,’ and ‘context’ which are integral parts of CDA to unravel the underline ‘Ideological Discursive Formation’ in their texts.

1.2 Aim and Objectives of the Study

This study aims at establishing the underlinedideology (IDF) and power play in the reportage of corruption related proceedings by the Nigerian Media. This aim will be further established in the following objectives:

i. That each Nigerian media has its own IDF which drives its thought and shapes its reportage.

ii. Whether or not corruption related proceedings have been appropriately reported in spite of different political affiliations of the news editors or even the proprietor of the news establishment.

iii. That the reporters have some linguistic devices or vocabularies that dominate their text for peculiar reason or reasons.

iv. That every news oncorruption reportage carries along with it issues of power play between social actors in the discourse.

1.3 Significance of the Study

The significance of this study cannot be over emphasized. It is an advancement of the existing studies on corruption reports in Nigeria especially from a discourse analysis point of view. The study will unearth the underlined ideological formations that guide media reportage on corruption. It will also expose the power exhibited through the use of language, as well as reportage of the media on corruption cases. At the end of the study, therefore, students of language and researchers would find it resourceful in their future endeavours.

1.4 Research Questions

At the end of the study, the following questions would have been answered:

i. What is Critical Discourse Analysis?

ii. What IDF controls the thought and shapes the text of Nigerian media reportage?

iii. Has reportage of corruption related proceedings been affected as a result of the political affiliation of either the editors or proprietors of the media establishment?

iv. What power has been exhibited through the media reportage?

v. What identity is being exposed in the media report on corruption?

vi. What linguistic devices or vocabularies dominate the text and for what reason(s)?

1.5 Methodology

This research work is content analysis based on secondary data. The data for analysis are collected newspapers and television reportages, while a review of literature was done from source materials which include text books, hand books, articles from journals etcetera that are relevant to this research. The methodology adopted for this study will be further elaborated inchapter three under the research design.

1.6 Scope and Limitation

This study is a Critical Discourse Analysis of media reportage on corruption related issues. It covers five media outfits; that is two (2) print media (newspaper) and three (3) broadcast media (television). The reports are randomly selected between 2015 and 2018. In this work, the researcher has adopted ‘Ideology’ and ‘Power’ which are integral parts of Critical Discourse Analysis to establish the Ideological Discursive Formation (IDF) of each of the selected media outfits and how such has been projected in their reportage. The selected print media are: ‘The Nation’ newspaper and ‘The Sun’ newspaper. The Broadcast media include: Channels Television, Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and Africa Independent Television (AIT). The choice of these media establishments is purposive for their wide coverage in Nigeria and beyond especially the Broadcast media so selected.

The limitation to this study is solely the researcher’s inability to explore all the available print and broadcast media in their respective languages of information dissemination and even the social media, which today has more coverage, for want of time and need for specificity. Also, the work is limited to Critical Discourse Analysis with emphasis on Ideological Discursive Formation (IDF). The limitation is because this study cannot handle all the areas of study in Discourse Analysis.

CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.0 Introduction

This chapter discusses some conceptual frame works and the theoretical frame work for the study. Issues such as Critical Discourse Analysis, trends in Media Discourse, Corruption Reportage in the Nigerian media, Context, Identity and Role in Discourse, Language Use in Discourse, Ideological Formations and so on are examined in line with the focus of this research.

2.1 Critical Discourse Analysis: An Overview

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a contemporary approach to the study of language and discourses in social institutions. It focuses on the way and manner language exercises its power in the society. Critical Discourse Analysis began from the assumption that systematic asymmetries of power and resources between speakers and listeners, readers and writers can be linked to their unequal access to linguistic and social resources. It hinges on the notion that language use is a social practice which does not function in isolation but in a set of cultural, social and psychological frameworks. CDA accepts this social context and studies its connections with textual structures. It also takes the social context into account and explores the links between textual structures and their functional interaction within the society.

The terms, Critical Linguistics (CL) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) are often used interchangeably. However, the latter is often preferred and used to denote the former theory previously identified as Critical Linguistics. CDA is a relatively new approach in discourse studies, whose emergence could be traced to a small symposium of discourse scholars in Amsterdam in 1990 and headed by Van Dijk. He views CDA as;

a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social

power abuse, dominance and inequality are enacted, reproduced and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. With such dissident research, critical discourse analysts take explicit position and thus want to understand, expose and ultimately resist social inequality. (23)

When two interlocutors engage in a conversation, there is often an implicit ideology which explicitly manifests through the exercise of social power and dominance. This is made more manifest, especially, when the conversation is made between a dominant social actor and a dominated social actor; the former being described by Wodak and Meyer as “powerful groups” (3) while the latter is described as the “dominated groups” (Van Dijk 96).

When a text or talk is subjected to interrogation with the aim of discovering hidden meanings and value structures, discourse becomes ‘critical.’ This analysis is carried out when the hearer or reader uses all linguistic features and cues available to him in the ‘said’ to generate meanings from the ‘unsaid’ in a manner that exposes power and abuse of power, dominance, inequality and invested institutional ideologies in the discourse of a powerful group, then discourse studies is said to be in the domain of Critical Discourse Analysis. Critical Discourse Analysis is, therefore, “a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context” (Van Dijk 1).

Wodak and Meyer believe that every discourse is structured by dominance and the “dominant structures are legitimated by the ideologies of powerful groups” (3). CDA is a mixture of a linguistic and social theory that focuses on discourse within social practice. The knowledge of the grammar, phonology and the structural patterns of a text or talk is no doubt, very important. It has become very necessary, however, to look beyond these primary linguistic features of the language and dissect every utterance to see if there is more to know, that the structure of the language ordinarily would not offer by merely probing its grammaticality. This is why Ike- Nwafor is of the view that language is no longer just for “reflecting reality, it is central for creating reality” (2).

Critical Discourse Analysis is relatively a new approach to the study of language. Before now, scholars were interested in the structural patterns and forms of language. For many decades, the preoccupation of many linguists has been the study of grammar and other aspects of language. Recent researches by linguists have clearly shown a revolutionary shift of attention from language form to language functions (Fairclough 1992; Leeuwen 2008; Van Dijk 1977). This has opened a new approach to the study of language and provoked a scholarly investigation into the use of language in social context and how the opaque ideology embedded in a discourse can be unveiled.

According to Meyer (15), “Critical Discourse Analysis is an investigative approach that is essentially concerned with unearthing the opaque meaning that underlies the discourse of social actors in a manner that exposes the display of power and abuse of power, dominance, and inequality among them.” In other words, it is an exercise that endeavours to make explicit, power relationships which are frequently hidden in text and talk. Critical Discourse Analysis is also concerned with “unveiling the implicit and explicit oppression, discrimination and power that are manifest in discourse- both spoken and written.”(Dellinger n.p.)

Critical Discourse Analysis, as a discipline, came up as a “reaction against the dominant formal paradigms of the 1960s and 1970s” (Van Dijk 352). This reaction was particularly necessary because earlier works by many scholars were not ‘critical’ enough but focused much attention on the structural patterns of language with less concern for the use and the misuse of such language to achieve certain aims from certain people in a certain social setting. Critical Discourse Analysis can be said to be the brainchild of the ideas put together by scholars at the Frankfurt School before the World War II (Van Dijk 352). These ideas brought to the fore, subsequent developments in linguistic studies around 1970s and 1980s. As earlier noted, it was initially called Critical Linguistics (CL) but later metamorphosed to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) around 1990s (Onifade 65). Wodak and Meyer gave a brief historical account of the advent of CDA thus:

CDA as a network of scholars emerged in the early 1990s, following a small symposium in Amsterdam, in January 1991. By chance and through the support of the University of Amsterdam, Teun Van Dijk, Norman Fairclough, Gunther Kress, Theo Van Leeuwen and Ruth Wodak spent two days together, and had the wonderful opportunity to discuss theories and methods of discourse analysis and specifically CDA. The meeting made it possible for everyone to confront each other with the very distinct and different approaches, which still mark the different approaches today (4).

Critical Discourse Analysis is particularly interested in revealing the implicit ideology inherent in words of an elite group and how this manifests in the exercise of power and social hegemony. It shows the relationships between discourse and society. According to Fowler (25), “texts must be probed in order to uncover hidden meaning and value structure inherent in them.” The CDAresearcher, therefore, needs some skills and methods to be used to decipher the “hidden ideological meaning behind the written or oral word” (McGregor 7).

The relationship between critical discourse analysis and discourse may be likened to a tree and its branches because CDA is an approach to discourse study. Scholars have, no doubt, used the term ‘Discourse’ to analyse social relations severally. According to Weedon, “discourse is a “structuring principle of society that is enacted in social institutions and taken up in modes of thought and individual subjectivity” (41). Weedon further states that “discourses are manifestations of relations of power and political interests that constitute individuals as subjects who reproduce and/or transform discourse through social practices” (41). In other words, it is a broad term with various definitions which “integrates a whole palette of meanings” (Titscher 42 in Bayram 26), covering a large area from linguistics, through sociology, philosophy and other disciplines. The inter-disciplinary nature of discourse prompted Fairclough to hold the view that discourse is “the whole process of interaction of which a text is just a part” (24). In line with this position, it can be deduced that discourse is every social relation, social practices, discursive practices and non-discursive practices such as facial expression, body language, painting, (semiotics) and other non-linguistic relations.

In addition, discourse is a form of language use. It is viewed as communicative events, which encompass certain beliefs, ideologies, identities, politics, and the like (Chilton and Schauffner 19). Communication is obviously something beyond simply transferring a message from the sender to the receiver; discourse analysts frequently speak of interpretative work (Wodak and Cilla,npn). Sometimes, textualized or verbalized statements of people aim more than conveying what they say at the surface level directly and explicitly. The most important issue is the social information that is usually conveyed inexplicitly. Fitch (npn) opines that discourse does not have a rigid framework. It is often considered as a general methodology, theory or merely critique tied to social constructionism or social power and oppression. Some discourse analysts are linguists or applied linguists and as such, they try to analyze texts (textual and verbal) in terms of their grammatical structures, others draw mainly on conversational analysis (CA) and speech act theory. Other discourse analysts may have no specific procedure of rigorous analysis. Instead, they search for patterns of language use that may be linked to social or power structure and ideological colourings. This is the branch of discourse, which is called Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and which combines linguistic analysis, ideological criticism and cognitive psychology. CDA has, therefore, become one of the most widely used methods in discourse analysis (DA) in modern linguistic study. According to Fairclough and Wodak in Wodak and Meyer (6), CDA sees “language as social practice” and considers the “context of language use” to be crucial. Wodak and Meyer further explained that CDA sees discourse as language use in speech and writing as a form of ‘social practice’. They describe discourse as social practice which implies a dialectical relationship between a particular discursive event and the situation(s), institution(s) and social structure(s), which frames it; the discursive event is shaped by them, but it also shapes them. That is, discourse is socially constitutive as well as socially conditioned. It constitutes situations, objects of knowledge, and the social identities of and relationships between people and groups of people. It is constitutive both in the sense that it helps to sustain and reproduce the social status quo, and in the sense that it contributes to transforming it. Since discourse is socially consequential, it gives rise to important issues of power. Discursive practices may have major ideological effects; that is, they can help produce and reproduce unequal power relations between (for instance) social classes, women and men, and ethnic/cultural majorities and minorities through the ways in which they represent things and position people (Fairclough and Wodak 258). This, therefore, implies that CDA understands discourses as relatively stable uses of language serving the organization and structuring of social life…(Wodak npn). To Van Dijk (96), Critical Discourse Analysis is an interdisciplinary approach to text and talk which aims to investigate criticallysocial inequality as it is expressed, signalled, constituted and legitimized. Fowler (4) opines that, “CDA challenges common sense by pointing out that something could have been represented some other way, with a very different significance”. Influenced by the functional approach to language (Halliday, 1985) and the social theory of Western Marxism (Gramsci, 1971; Foucault, 1972), CDA takes as its basis the idea that there is an imbalance in the access members of a society have to social, and specifically linguistic, resources; that these resources are controlled by social institutions; and that restricting access to the resources both produces and maintains patterns of social inequality. As such, CDA commits itself to the exposure of these patterns, and wherever possible, it does so from a perspective that is consistent with the best interests of dominated groups (van Dijk, 96-97).

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