A PRAGMA – SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF GRAFFITI OF KADUNA POLYTECHNIC STUDENTS

A PRAGMA – SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF GRAFFITI OF KADUNA POLYTECHNIC STUDENTS

Abstract:

This work is a pragma-semiotic analysis of graffiti of Kaduna Polytechnic students. Graffiti refer to the crude inscriptions or drawings which can be found on the doors and walls of public places. In this paper, an attempt is made to understand the signification systems involved in students’ graffiti, hence the employment of elements of pragmatics and semiotics necessary for the interpretation of the various meanings and their effect on the decoders. The fact that there is fluidity of pragmatics in semiotics and the effect of this is the prompt interpretation of symbols and reaction to the systems of signs. The pragma-semiotic theory therefore, investigates the totality of signification systems, linguistic (verbal) and non-linguistic (pictorial, colour, image etc). The findings from this study concludes that students graffiti are meant to inform the decoder, affect his/her opinions by persuading him/her towards a particular point of view, influence and orient him/her morally towards more beneficial and positive goals, warn about impending danger, and generally integrate everyone for mass participation in the desired and altruistic regeneration of development efforts. Most importantly, student’ graffiti are found to be verdictives, exersitives, commissives, behavitives and expositives which account for the perlocutionary effect on the decoder. The study arrived at such findings by integrating Austin, Searle and Adegbija’s theory of speech acts and Peirce’s theory of ‘semeiois’.

A PRAGMA – SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF GRAFFITI OF KADUNA POLYTECHNIC STUDENTS