A Pragmatic Study of Lexico-Semantic Features in Job Adverts in Selected Nigerian Newspapers

Abstract

This study undertakes a pragmatic analysis of the lexico-semantic features deployed in job advertisements published in two leading Nigerian newspapers, The Daily Trust and The Vanguard, in February 2023. Rather than treating anaphoric reference, acronyms, and compound words as purely formal or stylistic devices, the study examines them as pragmatic choices through which advertisers manage shared knowledge, minimise informational cost, and secure the co-operation of a specific target audience within a highly constrained communicative context. Anchored in a pragmatic framework combining Grice's Cooperative Principle and conversational maxims, the theory of presupposition, and deixis, the study examines six advertisement excerpts (three from each newspaper) purposively selected because they exhibit the lexico-semantic features under investigation. Data were subjected to qualitative pragmatic analysis, attending to how anaphoric reference functions as a form of textual deixis that presumes retrievable antecedents, how acronyms trigger existential and knowledge presuppositions that filter the audience into informed insiders and uninformed outsiders, and how compound words satisfy the Gricean maxim of quantity by packaging complex requirements into economical units. Findings show that the lexico-semantic choices in Nigerian job advertisements are pragmatically motivated: they rely on inference, shared context, and calculated economy to communicate more than their surface form states, while also performing an implicit gatekeeping function that separates qualified applicants from the general readership. The study concludes that Nigerian job advertisements are best understood as pragmatically dense texts in which presupposition and economy of expression jointly serve communicative efficiency, persuasion, and audience selection, and it recommends further pragmatic and comparative research on recruitment communication in Nigeria.