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This paper explores the communicative acts deployed in covid-19 vaccination-related pictorials circulated on digital media platforms. Seven internet images were purposively sampled with a view to exploring their communicative functions as well as their generic structure. The data, which were culled from the websites of the World Health Organisation, Centre for Disease Control, Pan American Health Organisation and Facebook, were subjected to qualitative analysis. The study deployed van Leeuwen’s Multimodal Discourse Analysis and Yuen’s Generic Structure Potential as theoretical anchor. The multimodal communicative acts are deployed for instructive, illustrative, informative, persuasive, inviting and advisory purposes. Categories such as Lead, Emblem, Announcement and Enhancer are compulsory in the data while Display, Tag and Call-and-Visit Information are non-compulsory elements. This can be catalogued as: ‘Lead^(Display)^Emblem^(Announcement)^(Enhancer)^(Tag)^(Call-and-Visit Information)’. The study contends that the various semiotic resources deployed in the internet-circulated covid-19 images are used not only for informative and other communicative purposes but also to evoke attitudinal change towards and encourage widespread acceptance of the covid-19 vaccines.

This study undertakes a digito-linguistic analysis of the 2019 Inauguration/Democracy speech of former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s with a view to identifying the various discursive structures in the speech and the social functions they perform. The study adopts van Dijk’s socio-cognitive theory of critical discourse analysis as a theoretical framework. Data were selected through the purposive sampling method and subjected to qualitative and quantitative analysis. The study identifies fourteen discursive structures: actor description, authority, comparison, disclaimer, euphemism, evidentiality, example/illustration, irony, lexicalisation, metaphor, self-glorification, norm expression, number game, us-them, pervading the five discourse strategies in Buharis’s speech. The discourse strategies which include: number game; self-glorification; validation of the Nigeria project; highlighting of achievements, and deployment of escapist statements, are engaged to: express commitment to the development of the nation, give a positive self-representation, and dissociate from Nigeria’s woes. Voyant tools reveal the preponderance of Buhari’s expression of commitment to the Nigerian course. The study concludes that Buhari uses his Democracy/Inauguration speech to emphasise the importance of the Nigeria project and to call for social change among Nigerians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020, it has become a source of worry across countries within the global space. It has posed not only a health challenge but also an economic and a linguistic burden. Linguistic burden because many efforts are being made by stakeholders to appropriately represent or codify the manifestations of the disease in unambiguous and understandable terms. Hence, one of the major platforms where COVID-19 has been variously represented is the social media. This study, therefore, focuses on a multimodal analysis of the representation of the COVID-19 pandemic on two social media platforms: Facebook and WhatsApp. The study adopts Kress's social semiotic model as theoretical framework. This model explains the meaning affordances of verbal and non-verbal semiotic resources. It examines communicators' intentions and makes meanings through multiple semiotic modes. This model is adopted because it offers a sociological perspective to the interpretation of visual texts. Twenty-five semiotic resources comprising memes and flash headlines, which were purposively sourced from Facebook and WhatsApp over a period of twelve weeks between April and July 2020, were analysed in the study. The data were subjected to both pictorial and simple descriptive linguistic analysis. The study reveals that COVID-19 memes extend economic and social concerns in Nigeria. The semiotic resources expose social problems such as poverty, insecurity and inequality in the Nigerian society which pose a threat to strict adherence to safety measures; and establish the manifestation of religion and gender issues in COVID-19 debates. Furthermore, it provides informative-cum-instructional functions in the fight against COVID-19. The study suggests that the deployment of appropriate linguistic and extralinguistic codes could guarantee effective and targeted public health enlightenment on COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]