Contextualization and Meaning in Public-Sphere Discourses of Government Ministers- Citizen Interactions in Nigeria

Abstract

Public sphere discourses of government ministers-citizen interactions are common political discourse events in Nigeria. There is seemingly nothing unfamiliar about political discourses, but what needs clarification is the place of context and contextualization in encoding and decoding intentions/meanings, especially in public sphere discourses of government ministers-citizen interactions in Nigeria. Aspects of Presupposition in Jacob Mey’s Pragmatics that deal with context was adopted as theoretical framework in explicating contextual factors and enhancement of meaning in texts. Data were sourced from interactions of the Ministerial platforms and the National Good Governance Tours of Nigeria through live-recordings on national radio and television broadcasts and transcribed verbatim to written texts. Analysis reveals that physical settings, background knowledge of participants and reasons for the discourses, which encompass the physical and social world and the socio-psychological factors, together influence how meaning is encoded and decoded. Also, it was identified that context determines the choice of language use and that speaker meaning is dependent on basic assumptions of knowledge that are shared by both the speaker and the audience. Overall, it is submitted that an awareness of contextual factors and the cues that herald them in texts will ensure clearer understanding of how intentions/meanings are encoded and decoded in texts.

Keywords: Political discourse interactions, Context, Public sphere discourses, Presupposition