Investigating multilingual contexts in the Nigerian advertising space: A domain of intellectual stimulation

• Published in: Crossroads (Białystok, Poland) no. 2 (29); pp. 4 - 26
• Main Author: Dalamu, Taofeek Olaiwola
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wydział Filologiczny Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku 2020; Faculty of Philology at the University of Bialystok; Faculty of Philology, University of Bialystok
• Subjects: advertising; intellectualism; Language studies; Marketing / Advertising; Morphology; msystem; multilingual context; Semantics; Theoretical Linguistics; multilingual context; advertising; morphology; intellectualism; mood system
• ISSN: 2300-6250; 2300-6250
• DOI: 10.15290/CR.2020.29.2.01

This study examined advertising, exhibiting multilingual structures to reach the Nigerian audience. Halliday’s mood system and morphological processes served as the theoretical configurations for analyzing textual elements of advertisements. These contextual terminologies permitted quantitative and qualitative approaches to thrive in order to culminate the investigation. Thus, the analysis showed political motifs, religious spheres, royal domains, musical settings, and friendship environment, as the fascinating panaceas to motivate readers. English, Yorùbá, and Hausa languages were functional facilities to mesmerize consumers. However, the advertisements displayed textual interruptions: FEBUHARI, FELABRATION, OBIdiently, and ATIKUlating, being strong prerequisites in persuasive designs. Creativity indicates the logically-minded behavior of publicists in blending grammatical structures of different languages together, yielding a unified whole, generating novel semantic values for regurgitation. It seems indisputable that such textual constructs have the capability to influence lexicographers, increase word-stock(s) of languages, and projecting the advertising industry as possessing cerebral proficiencies in linguistics’ advancement.