Naming and Describing in Pastor Sam Adeyemi's Nigeria of My Dream
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60787/jolan.vol29no1.459Keywords:
Naming and describing, critical stylistics, Pastor Sam Adeyemi, Nigeria of My Dream, motivational discourse, ideologyAbstract
Nigeria’s socio-political realities have created a rich tradition of motivational discourse in which Pentecostal pastors articulate visions of national transformation. This study investigates how naming and describing, a critical stylistic device, is employed in Pastor Sam Adeyemi's motivational book, Nigeria of My Dream, to construct and propagate an ideology of national transformation. Drawing on Lesley Jeffries’ Critical Stylistics, eleven excerpts purposively selected from the introduction and the book’s five chapters were analysed qualitatively to examine the ideological functions of choice of nouns, noun modification, and nominalisation. The analysis reveals that choice of nouns portrays a country in progress, noun modification projects an envisioned future, and nominalisation condenses complex social processes and civic realities into rhetorically charged nominal forms. These strategies, combined with temporal and spatial framing, ideologically position readers to align with Adeyemi’s vision of transformation. The study thus contributes to the study of motivational religious discourse in Nigeria by showing how choice of nouns, noun modification and nominalisation function as ideological resources in a written motivational text, thereby extending critical stylistic research beyond sermons and political speeches.
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