Dr David Oyedepo, Chancellor,
Covenant University (CU), Ota in Ogun, has appealed to intellectuals to ensure
they communicate to their listeners in the language they will understand.
Oyedepo
stated this on Thursday in Ota at the university’s inaugural
lecture series.
A
professor of Stylistics, Christopher Awonuga, delivered the lecture tagged: What does this text mean: Stylistics and the process of interpretation.’’
Oyedepo
said that no matter how intelligent and knowledgeable a man is in a particular
field, once he could not put his message across to his listeners meaningfully,
he could not be said to have communicated to them.
The
chancellor said there would always be correlation between man and language
because of their dynamism, adding that this necessitated the need for man to
continue to acquire more knowledge on language usage.
He
said examples abound the world over where clarity of communication had resulted
in ‘quality decision making’ that had shaped the society and brought about
positive development.
The
cleric said his calling as a communicator of the Gospel of Christ had made him
traverse the world.
This
is where the essence of meaning comes in; and I want to say you can’t be a part
of a decision if you cannot communicate effectively because clarity of
communication is vital in every relationship.
In
the lecture, Prof. Awonuga underscored the ambivalence nature in which English
personal pronouns such as: ‘mine’, ‘your’, ‘yours’, ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, ‘we’
‘their’’ and ‘they’ are used to connote various meanings in texts.
Awonuga
said he conducted linguistic analysis of some poems and five texts and found
that both speakers used personal pronouns to balance their relationship with
their audiences.
He
said the reviews and analysis demonstrate that in political rhetoric, the
relationships among participants in the discourse situations are mediated by
personal pronouns.
This
delineates a social or political ‘space’ in which people and groups have a
political ‘position’.
In
his recommendations, Awonuga advised students of English to always read the
stylistic study of poetry and prose frictional texts to enhance their styles.
(NAN)
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