Journal of Language and Pragmatics Studies

Syntactic analysis in Filipino AFAM hunters facebook group posts

2026-03-26T15:13:27+07:00

Nowadays, by the use of English language on Facebook, Filipinos—especially Filipino AFAM Hunters—are easily able to communicate with foreigners, forging connections through online dating and social interaction. Highlighting global trends, Filipinos more likely to use Facebook, the nation’s most popular social media platform, to interact with various nationalities and express their intentions and emotions. This connects with what Abrazaldo (2023) says about how colonial mentality affects Filipinos' online dating choices, which often leads to relationships with foreigners who are thought to be financially stable and socially mobile. Banuag (2024) and Estremera (2021) both point out that informal language, creative sentence structures, and code-switching are common in these online spaces. This shows that clarity and contextual meaning are more important than strict grammatical rules. This study used Morley’s (2006) syntactic framework and Rahmawati and Rachmi’s (2022) analytical steps, where researchers examined 15 Facebook posts from the Filipino AFAM Hunters group to identify the most common syntactic deviations and patterns from Standard American English. Results from data analysis have revealed that frequent deviations involve punctuation and capitalization errors, run-on sentences, missing articles, and subject–verb disagreement. These data emphasize how users prioritize message clarity over grammatical accuracy, which is normal in informal online communication. The results also indicate that the socio-economic background and age of these users may affect their English proficiency. Finally, the study emphasizes the need for more extensive research in the future to examine more posts across additional social media platforms to have a better understanding of how people linguistically behave in the online landscape.

Linguistic, cultural, and religious self fashioning as strategic market branding: Performing multidimensional identities in Nigerian hip hop

2026-03-26T15:13:23+07:00

This article investigates how Nigerian hip hop artists construct and circulate multidimensional identities as a core aesthetic and commercial practice. Drawing on insights from scholarship on language, youth subcultures, and cultural hybridity, the study focuses on the deployment of linguistic, cultural, and religious resources in lyrics and performance. Using qualitative textual analysis of selected tracks and videos by mainstream Nigerian hip hop artists, supported by discourse‑analytic concepts such as code‑switching, metaphor, and “street” personae, the article examines how vernaculars, Nigerian Pidgin, indigenous languages, and English are strategically mixed to index authenticity, subcultural belonging, and mass appeal. The analysis highlights how artists hybridize global hip hop forms with local musical idioms and cultural symbols, and how they weave Christian and Muslim references into narratives of struggle, morality, and success. These identity practices function simultaneously as ideological expressions—challenging cultural imperialism and reasserting Nigerian values—and as deliberate branding strategies that expand fan bases across age, class, ethnic, and religious divides. The article concludes that Nigerian hip hop is a key site where identity work, cultural politics, and market logics intersect, and that its multilingual, hybrid aesthetics are central to both its local legitimacy and global visibility.

Discourses of beauty: An ideological apparatus of women marginalization in Pakistani literature

2026-03-26T15:13:16+07:00

The present research aims at deconstructing the ideals of beauty in English literature produced by Pakistani women. It also focuses on demystifying the discursive structures which define a set of normative standards of beauty in a patriarchal society like Pakistan. The study is based on a corpus of twenty novels authored by women. The metaphor of beauty has been demystified by employing FCDA. This research attempts to understand the ways women view the image of female beauty as compared to the perspective of men on female beauty. The research found Adjective-phrase as one of the most constitutive parts of Discourse of beauty. It found that the adjectives like gorgeous, pretty, delicate, elegant, attractive were most frequently associated with the image of woman to constitute her as beauty being. Several discursive strategies in this regard have been employed by both counterparts to maintain the Status quo of societal power in Pakistani patriarchal society. This conceptualization of beauty is so pervasively disseminated in the minds of women that they feel proud of being admired and appreciated by their counterpart. The study also highlights that women are taken as beauty being, a thing, a toy or an instrument to be enjoyed. No doubt, women’s beauty in men’s discourses equates to their physical appearance and sexual object. The same tendency has been highlighted in women discourses which as well reflect that the women are aware of male gaze regarding feminine beauty. The concept of beauty is strictly associated only with women and considered as an inherent trait of an acceptable woman in the society. The phenomenon reiterates the historical and traditional concept of beauty attached only to women. This concept of passivation contributes to women's continued marginalization as inactive beings of society.

Syntax in reddit comments: An analysis of responses on coping with life’s lowest points

2026-03-26T15:13:25+07:00

Syntax, or the arrangement of words and phrases into sentences, plays a crucial role in shaping meaning. In digital communication, informal and rapid exchanges have led to noticeable shifts in sentence structures, particularly in online communities such as Reddit, where users share personal experiences and seek support. This study analysed ten comments from the r/INTJ thread “How do you cope when you’re at your lowest point in life?” to classify sentences by type and identify non-standard forms, exploring how syntax functions in casual online coping discourse. Using purposive sampling, each comment was analysed for sentence types and non-standard forms using frameworks from Quirk et al. (1985) and Crystal (2001), while all identifying information was removed to ensure ethical handling of online data. Results showed that declarative and imperative sentences were most common, reflecting users’ tendencies to share experiences and offer advice. Non-standard forms, including punctuation variation, abbreviations, informal lexical choices, and non-standard spelling, also appeared frequently. These patterns suggest that users prioritize emotional expression and support rather than strict grammatical accuracy. Based on these findings, future research may expand the corpus, compare comments across different years, and integrate semantic analysis to better understand how users construct empathy and shared meaning in online coping communities.

Emotional intelligence and intercultural growth: Examining affective dimensions in the EFL public speaking classroom

2026-03-26T15:13:19+07:00

Although Emotional Intelligence (EI) is often associated with communication success, EFL studies tend to position it as an individual psychological attribute and have not yet explored its affective dimension in the process of intercultural growth. This research aims to reconstruct EI as a relational practice in EFL public speaking classes. The study used an ethnographic approach based on an interpretivist paradigm, involving 24 EFL students at a private university. Data were collected over one semester through participant observation, video recordings of presentations, peer feedback sessions, reflective journals, and field notes. Analysis was conducted abductively and iteratively, combining open coding, micro-ethnography of interaction, and theoretical coding. The findings indicate that speech anxiety, embodied confidence, interactional empathy, and negotiation of cultural voice form a relational ecology of affect that fosters intercultural becoming. EI does not emerge as a stable competency, but rather as a situated and co-constructed affective practice. This study concludes that EFL public speaking is an arena for intercultural transformation rooted in emotional engagement rather than merely rhetorical mastery.

Facework and adversarial journalism in Nigerian political interviews: Facework in journalism

2026-03-26T15:13:21+07:00

Political interviews are sites where accountability, power, and public identity are negotiated in real time. While studies of Nigerian political discourse have focused on politicians’ rhetorical strategies, journalists’ role as active face managers has received limited attention. Based on Brown & Levinson’s Face Acts Theory (1987), this article analyses how face-threatening, face-saving, and face-repair moves appear in Rufai Oseni's political interviews on Arise TV. Through a qualitative discourse pragmatics approach on eight purposely chosen excerpts, this article demonstrates that face acts not only fulfill a politeness function but also occur within expert identity building and power negotiation. The results show that face-threatening moves in journalistic practices in the Nigerian media context appear to be socially accepted strategies of adversarial accountability. This article adds to political discourse pragmatics literature by arguing in favour of context-sensitive practices in facework, rather than relying on Cook's ideal models developed in Western contexts and adapted to other continents like Africa.