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.

Technical education is a major boost to national development because it helps in job creation. This makes technical universities important institutions. The upgrade of polytechnics to technical universities in Ghana has been an important milestone in the enhancement of technical and vocational education. Due to this upgrade, technical universities which were hitherto polytechnics had to compose new anthems to indicate and reflect their new status as universities. The present study focuses on how stylistically significant devices are used to construe the goals of technical and vocational education in anthems of Ghanaian technical universities. The study adopts the descriptive qualitative methodological approach which is theoretically framed by the linguistic and stylistic categories theory postulated by Leech and Short (2007). Anthems of six out of the ten technical universities in Ghana were homogenously sampled using the purposive sampling technique. The sampled anthems which served as data for the study were manually coded using the consensual coding strategy. The study identified the use of dominant stylistic devices such as repetition, parallelism, metaphor, personification and allusion in the sampled anthems. Repetition was used to emphasise the need for institutional solidarity. Parallelism was used to foreground the aims of the universities as well as create rhythmic effects to enhance the musicality in the anthems. Geographical and biblical allusions were used to establish religious and cultural hegemonies while personification and metaphor were also used to foreground the relevance and uniqueness of the institutions. The findings of the study have implications for research and practice. The study concludes that anthems of Ghanaian technical universities are not just construed as institutional symbols but also as mediums for marketing technical education. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0883/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>