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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]