Stance_Taking_and_Pragmatic_Strategies_i.pdf

Newspaper editorials (NPEs) provide a platform for a newspaper editor or any person directed by the editor to express the opinion of the newspaper on a particular subject. Previous studies on NPEs have focused more on framing and rhetorical features, but have not significantly explored stance taking and pragmatic strategies in newspaper editorials on herdsmen and farmers crises in Nigeria. The subjective stance taking and pragmatic strategies in NPEs on herdsmen and farmers crises in Nigeria were examined to establish the editors’ opinion on the crises in Nigeria. Two editorials on January, 2018 herdsmen attacks in Benue State, one for each from two widely read newspapers: The Punch and ThisDay were purposively sampled. The study adopted stance theory and multimodal discourse analysis as its theoretical framework. The findings revealed that four stance types occur in the data, namely, epistemic, evaluative, evidential, and affective stance. These stance types were projected by eight pragmatic strategies: indirect condemnation, blunt condemnation, strategic use of numbers, appeal to emotions, evocation of antecedent, revelation of facts, visual representation, and quoting authority. The study concluded that a combined study of stance taking and pragmatic strategies in newspaper editorials on herdsmen and farmers crises 2 would contribute to a better understanding of newspapers’ positions on national issues, and provide insights into ways of resolving conflicts in Nigeria