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This article investigates the discourse functions of antonymy in Amma Darko’s Faceless. It also explores the principles that govern the order of antonymous pairs in Faceless. The study is motivated by an observation, based on corpus data, that certain antonymous pairs co-occur in written data, and that they perform various discourse functions. There is also the argument that certain antonymous pairs tend to be used in a preferred sequence in the sentence. Data was collected from Amma Darko’s Faceless, a novel about the plight of street children in Ghana. The authors argue that in Faceless, antonymous pairs often co-occur within one word class and that these antonym pairs function differently to highlight some of the themes of the novel. The authors also argue that in the novel, antonym sequence is influenced by the following principles: idiomaticity and non-gender, chronology and positivity. Keywords: antonymy, antonymous pair, discourse function & themes

This paper is a cognitive linguistic study of metaphors in some addresses by His Majesty Otumfoɔ Osei Tutu ii, Asantehene, within the framework of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (cmt), put forward by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). The aim was to identify the metaphors underlying some of his expressions, and also to demonstrate how ideological values are subtly intertwined with metaphors in diplomatic discourse. Among others, the following metaphors were identified: LIFE IS A JOURNEY, LIFE IS A BATTLE, IDEAS ARE FOOD, KNOWING IS SEEING, DEATH IS A LOSS and DEATH IS SLEEP/REST. The analysis also reveals that a small set of primary metaphors – LIFE IS A JOURNEY and LIFE IS A BATTLE provide basic level structure for complex metaphors. The understanding and explanation of the metaphors are closely related to the social and cultural beliefs of the King, thus revealing the existence of a coherent conceptual organisation which derives from our bodily and social experience.

Hedging, as a rhetorical tool, has received considerable attention from scholars from diverse fields of study such as advertisement, politics, and religion. Despite the extensive exploration of the topic, it has not received much attention in health communication. Thus, this study, which employs Quirk, Greeenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik’s (1985) functional principle for establishing word class and Hyland’s (1998) model as frameworks, investigated the various linguistic realizations and functions of hedges in pharmaceutical leaflets (PL), which are also called Patient Information Leaflets. The study, which is based on 50 PLs obtained from some leading pharmaceutical shops within the Cape Coast metropolis and other areas, adopted both qualitative and quantitative content analysis. It was found that pharmaceutical companies employed certain lexico-grammatical hedging devices to mitigate their claims. The study has implications for both patient-pharmacist communication and hedging theories.