Lexicalisation in Media Representation of the 2003 and 2007 General Elections in Nigeria

Abstract

Some of the previous studies on media representation of elections in Nigeria only provided impressive theoretical and critical analyses of ideology. Not much has been done to show how such ideology(ies) could be lexically accounted for. Given the fact that ideologies are very crucial in elections, this study investigates the ways the cover stories in two Nigerian news magazines, Tell and The News, lexically, express the ideological pursuits of social actors in the 2003 and 2007 general elections in Nigeria. This paper adopts Fairclough theoretical model on ‘wording’ which is equivalent to Halliday’s theoretical model on ‘lexicalisation’. In the analysis, we observe that both magazines used linguistic tools to represent their ideological affiliations, that is, election in Nigeria is a dirty game and politicians are insincere. Lexicalisation and intertextuality intermingled to depict contextual lexical choices.