Corruption has been one of the main challenges bedeviling the African society. Most artistic works in the form of writing and craft have dealt extensively with this canker of corruption. The poem ‘Ambassadors of Poverty’ is one of such works that touches on corruption in Africa. The present study seeks to examine the communicative implications underpinning the use of parallelism and semantic deviation in the poem. The study is situated within the linguistic and stylistic categories framework by Leech and Short (2007). The findings of the study identify forms of parallelism (noun phrases, prepositional phrases, simple and complex sentences) as well as forms of semantic deviation (metaphor, personification, irony, sarcasm, paradox, oxymoron and symbolism). The findings further unveil a preponderant use of varied shades of parallel structures to juxtapose the impoverished state of the ordinary African with the corrupt and luxurious lifestyle of African leaders while forms of semantic deviation are used to encode the unpatriotic attitudes of African leaders in figurative terms.  The study concludes that literary works such as poems are potent instruments that are subtly used to expose and condemn the ills of society. The study has implications for research, theory and practice.

This paper employed the qualitative research approach to investigate the use of epistemic modality (EM) in four selected inaugural speeches of ex-presidents in the fourth republic of Ghana. It was underpinned by the interpersonal metafunction in Hallidayan's (1994) Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory which dovetails into the concept of EM. The analysis was done with the aid of corpus-based computer software-AntConc. The findings revealed a preponderant use of modal verbs with a frequency of 165 representing 84.2% while lexical verbs occur 13 times representing 6.6%. Adjectives and adverbs are minimally used with a frequency of 11 and 7 representing 5.6% and 3.6% respectively. The findings also revealed that Ghanaian presidents in the fourth republic dominantly use high values of EM to present themselves as bold, confident, committed and forthright in their utterances. Additionally, they were also communicatively sensitive as they use tentative markers when addressing sensitive issues. The study bears implications for pedagogy, theory and practice as it boosts the concept of EM and its appropriate use in political discourse.