Pragma-Semiotic Analysis of Language Use in Some Selected Signboards in Sokoto State University.

Student: Fatimah Olushola Shehu (Project, 2025)
Department of English Language
Sokoto State University, Sokoto, Sokoto State


Abstract

This study sets out to use pragmatic principles to do the Pragma-Semiotic Analysis of Language Used in Some Selected Signboards in Sokoto State University. It portrays how advertisers use pragmatic features to persuade, inform and manipulate their target audience. A survey of advertising texts and pictures was made to bring out those pragmatic features from the selected signboards. The instrument for data collection was an android phone for picturing the selected signboards. The study revealed that advertisers employed the pragmatic weapons of speech acts, implicature, context, symbolic elements, font style, etc as strategies in persuading, informing and manipulating their target audience. Based on the findings, it was recommended that since most of the advertisers are products of Nigerian educational system that efforts should be made to teach and emphasize the contextual meanings of words and expressions in our educational institution.

Keywords
pragma-semiotic analysis language selected signboards sokoto state university