A PRAGMA-STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF COMMAND TERMS AND EXPRESSIONS USED FOR PARADE IN THE NIGERIAN ARMY

Eugenia Chinyere  EKWESI

Eugenia Chinyere EKWESI Department of English, University of Lagos

Keywords: Command, Command Terms and Expressions, Parade, Communication, Implicature

Abstract

This paper examines a set of command terms and expressions used by the Nigerian Army for parade, with specific interest on their linguistic and contextual meaning on one hand, and their communicative functions on the other hand. In essence, this paper interrogates the discourse on command terms and expressions for parade in the Nigerian Army linguistically focusing on the structural and functional peculiarities. It explains how the terms and expressions constitute part of the Army’s communicative and operational repertoire, which, from a functional perspective, are used to demonstrate power and control during military exercises and constitute a formal communicative resource with inherent meaning structures. The paper is based on the fact that the inherent meaning features of the terms can be accounted for through a Pragmatic and Stylistic explication by employing the analytical tools of Pragmatics, specifically, the Speech Acts Theory by J.L. Austin (1962) and the Gricean Conversational Implicatures by H.P. Grice (1975).