A PRAGMATICS ANALYSIS OF COVID 19 ADVERTS BY NCDC

Abstract

This work investigates the COVID-19 adverts by NCDC. The challenges of ensuring that different layers of meaning are well enacted in the written text have motivated this present study. This study is aimed at interrogating how COVID-19 advertisements by NCDC are framed. Specifically, this study seeks to understand the locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act, as well as the level of abstraction, vocabulary, and how it affected the readability of NCDC COVID-19 adverts. The theoretical framework is anchored on Austin, J.L Speech Act Theory. The textual data for this study were drawn from adverts published on the NCDC website: www.covid19.ncdc.gov.ng. The choice of these adverts was based on the simplicity of the speech acts embedded in the adverts. It was discovered that NCDC adverts used multimodal speech acts which include texts, icons, and symbols to enact meaning in their campaign against the spread of COVID-19. It was also discovered that short sentences in the framing of the advertisement make the message apt and straight to the point. It was also discovered that some of the adverts were very ambiguous, misleading, and illogically framed.