CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.0 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY AND STATEMENT OF THE RESEARCH PROBLEM
There is no gainsaying the fact that the essence of language is communication. Many attempts have been made to describe what an effective communication is. One issue that runs through all the attempts is the area of meaning generation as a pivotal factor for an effective communication. Over the years, meaning generation has remained problematic because most of the approaches developed to explain how meaning is generated rely on the linguistic knowledge of the language users without looking at the extra-linguistic factors, therefore making those approaches to be inadequate. It was against this backdrop that pragmatics emerged in order to account for how meaning is generated in a communicative act by considering both the linguistic and the non-linguistic factors. The role of communication in governance cannot be overemphasized. This assertion supports the importance of delivering an inaugural speech on assumption of duty as an administrator. A presidential inaugural speech gives the president the first chance to use the official voice, which should indicate the direction of the new administration. Every utterance in such a speech communicates meaning. It is therefore important to embark on a pragmatic analysis of President Goodluck Jonathan’s inaugural speech, titled, Nigeria: Our Nation in Mourning, looking at the tokens of utterances in the speech with a view to accounting for how meaning is generated from the speech.
1.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
In order to account for how meaning is generated from President Good-luck Jonathan’s inaugural speech, some questions have emerged and they are: 1. In what way can context contribute to generating meanings from this speech? 2. What is the role of cognition in the way the president encoded his utterances? 3. Does cognition play any role in decoding meanings from the president’s inaugural speech? 4. How do social principles affect the utterances made by the president? 5. How does the president performs actions with his utterances?
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