CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Pragmatics is a shift from strict grammatical rules to a situational language use.It is a linguistic theory that studies meaning from the perspectives of language users, communication code and socio-cultural conventions. Hence, Mey (2007:6) asserts that “Pragmatics Studies the use of language in human communication as determined by the conditions of society”.
Cartoons are “Comic strips”. They create humour by portraying “observable characters in a society” (Bitner, 2003:306). Cartoons serve as a medium through which people are informed, educated and entertained by presenting societal happenings in hillarious manner. They are found in newspapers, magazines and newsletters.
Vanguard is a Nigeria Newspaper that centres on politics, education, sports, local and national news etc. It has a section named “pocket cartoon” which portrays socio-political events in the country.
With a view to studying pragmatics, Babatunde and Odepidan (2009) carry out a “Pragama- rhetorical strategies in selected speeches of President Olusegun Obasanjo (Former Nigeria President).Adetunji (2009)also conducts analysis of selectedacts. However, they did not focus on non-verbal aspects of language.
This work is therefore, borne out of a desire to study the workings of pragmatics (including non-verbal language) in selected pocket cartoons from editions of Vanguard so as to discover how utterances used in these cartoons reflect Nigerian socio-political realities.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This work aims at examining the role of contexts in the interpretation
of utterances contained in the selected cartoons. It equally wants to investigate how messages are encoded in and can be decoded from cartoons. The functions and effects of utterances in these cartoons will also be accounted for. Finally, the essay also aims at capturing the essence of world knowledge in the interpretation of utterances.
JUSTIFICATION
It is no gain-saying that non-linguistic features such as objects, persons and things are very pivotal in generating meaning from linguisticitems.In this regard, cartoons exhibit non-linguistic features which pragmatics as a theory takes care of. So, it is believed that this work will be of great benefit to students of English and literature, researchers and linguists that are interested in pragmatics.
SCOPE AND LIMITATION
Pragmatics is a theory that contains a number of theories. Thus, this project will be restricted to pragmatic theories such as ‘speech acts,’‘implicature,’‘intention and inference’ and ‘context’ as well as pragmatic elements such as ‘presupposition,’ ‘ world knowledge,’ ‘deixis,’ ‘ inference’ and ‘non-verbal language.’ Sixteen ‘pocket cartoons’ will be selected from Vanguard’s editions as our data.