The COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic (a global health emergency) following its ravaging spread and increasing death toll that led to the unprecedented multi-sectoral crisis and collateral damage.  These, and the non-discovery of reliable therapeutic medicines combined to generate rising fears and tension across the globe. To cope with these realities, discourse participants devised humorous expressions to create laughter, ease tension and melt fears.  The paper seeks to examine the contextual usage of such humorous expressions used in Nigeria, particularly in Calabar, that denote the sociolinguistic milieu, and shared knowledge and experience of the interactants.  The study adopts Relief and Encryption Theories of Humour because the theories account for the situational appropriateness of the humorous expressions as “coping devices” in coherence with the cognitive, linguistic, situational and social contexts. Data were generated by means of participant observation in on-site and virtual interactions in social media platforms. Findings show that COVID-19 pandemic has exerted irresistible pressure on language resources that stimulated the creation of humorous expressions as coping needs for the consequential circumstance. Specifically, the humorous expressions such as “happy wives”, “sad husbands”, “side chicks are hungry” among others were regularly and contextually deployed for comic reliefs and cognitive recreations to stimulate laughter in crisis.  Linguistically, the expressions are devised English structures and other constructs with codemixed elements derived from the registers of several discourse domains that reflect the Nigerian sociolinguistic environment. The constructs are therefore modelled to demystify the pandemic and unify interactants in order to ease tension and cope with the realities of the preventive and survival protocols.

This study is a visual semiotics analysis of Coronavirus memetic humour, aimed at ascertaining the implied meanings of selected Covid-19 related Facebook memes that stimulated virtual discourse among Nigerian netizens during the pandemic. The study adopts Visual Semiotics Theory and Encryption Theory of Humour to account for meanings derived from the presuppositional assumptions and shared sociocultural knowledge which serve as the decrypting ‘key’ to meaning. The ‘key’ activates the appropriate disambiguation and interpretation of the significations in the semiotic resources conveyed in the humorous memes. Nineteen Facebook Covid-19 related memes were selected as a representative sample for a descriptive and qualitative analysis. The analysis is coded into 11 discourse domains based on the related semiotic contents of the memes which include: preventive protocol, media reportage, religious beliefs, health sector, sociopolitical domain, socioeconomic domain, security, science, transportation, relationship and lifestyle to account for the differentials in perceptions by Nigerian netizens. Findings show that Nigerians created Coronavirus memetic humour to stimulate laughter in the rather consequential circumstances generated by the pandemic derived from the humorous contents of the image macros. In the Nigerian social context, the Coronavirus memes humorously instantiate the apprehension and helplessness of a people, and thrive to express protest, insecurity, corruption, religiosity, economic hardship and a poor health system. These, altogether combine as a myriad of the challenges facing a people who consolably devised coping strategies to trivialise the pandemic, while yearning for an inclusive government that prioritises the welfare of its citizens.

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This paper seeks to investigate the official communicative activities among Nigerian paramilitary formations in Akwa Ibom State, with a view to determining the peculiar forms generated through morphological processes that occur in their interactions. The agencies selected for the study are: the Nigeria Police Force, the Federal Road Safety Corps and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps. The theoretical framework adopted for, and considered relevant to the study is Lieb’s Theory of Process Model of Word Formation. The theory offers a comprehensive approach which accounts for all processes of word formation in a unified way. Data used for the study were collected through participant observation and unstructured interview of personnel while on duty within the office environment using random sampling method. The findings indicate that the operatives used English language for their formal conversations to communicate paramilitary ideology. In addition, they were found to have used unique lexical choices created specifically to serve the communication needs of the interlocutors. It is therefore recommended that operatives of these agencies should ‘simplify’ their morphologically-conditioned terminologies in particular, and the language in general, such that the public which they are meant to serve could understand.

This paper investigated the collocational choices used among three Nigerian paramilitary formations in their official discourse activities with a view to ascertaining the contextual meanings of the lexical choices. Data for the study were collected by means of participant observation and key informant interview (KII) of randomly selected segments of members in the office environment, patrol duties and muster parades. The findings showed that personnel of the formations used peculiar collocational choices in their formal discourse engagements with a high level of competence that enhanced in-group mutual intelligibility and solidarity. Categorically, the collocational choices occurred in eight different combinations: noun-noun, adjective-noun, verb-noun, adverb-adjective, adverb-verb, adverb-noun, noun-adjective and verb-adverb lexically compatible to advance institutionally modelled meanings. The lexical collocations are prominently two content words in the open class system consciously devised to communicate professional orientation for the discharge of their security and safety-related statutory duties.