The International Journal of Language Society and Culture Editors: Thao Lê and Quynh Lê URL: www.educ.utas.edu.au/users/tle/JOURNAL/ ISSN 1327-774X © LSC-2007 Page 63 Issue 27 News Headlines as Pragmatic Strategy in Nigerian Press Discourse Innocent Chiluwa Covenant University, Nigeria Abstract This paper shows that headlines are discourse units that are analyzable as independent texts. They are functional parts of news stories that are pragmatically encoded to underscore some special kinds of social meaning other than mere encapsulation of the body of news stories. As pragmatically rele- vant discourse type, headlines and their overlines are interpreted in terms of their relationship to in- formation in the social context. Previous studies on the language of the mass media identified some stylistic features of news reporting that are ideologically influenced by some peculiar perceptions or bias. (Adesanoye, 1974; Freeborn et al, 1986; Bell 1991). The present study applies the Speech act theory to show that headlines do indeed perform acts in the way they attempt to mediate the Nigerian socio-political experiences. News headlines are viewed as performing illocutionary functions as social- ly oriented discourse and are a critical strategy employed by journalists to denounce social malaise. Key words: headlines, overlines, acts, illocutionary, crises Introduction This study investigates how social crises and political scandals in Nigeria are constructed in the news headlines of the Nigerian press and how the illocutionary functions of these news headlines translate to social criticism. The “Nigerian Press” under study refers to Tell, The News and Newswatch maga- zines, three most widely read weekly news magazines in Nigeria. All three magazines are privately owned, with little or no government control. Most Nigerian magazines and newspapers except Daily Times are owned by private organizations and are read by the average Nigerian. The Tell magazine for example is also known as “the people’s parliament” because of its anti-military government position during the 1993 controversial general elections in Nigeria. My choice of these three magazines is in view of their relevance to the Nigerian media industry, and their prominence in the history of the Nige- rian socio-political development. The three news magazines had at different times challenged injustice and human right violations during the military era and were constantly at loggerheads with the military dictators. Newswatch’s antagonism against the military administration in the late 1980’s which was characteristic of liberal democracies outside of Africa was viewed as too confrontational by the maga- zine’s critics and feared that its style of reporting and the kind of support it enjoyed from the general public in a regime that did not tolerate public opinion was dangerous. Not long, the magazine’s editor- in-chief was murdered with a letter bomb on the morning of 19 th October, 1986. Six months later, the Babangida administration banned the magazine for publishing a report on the then political bureau. Many of the editors were detained and the offending edition of the magazine was seized by security agents. Tell established in 1991, practised in the tradition of Newswatch and rose to prominence with the an- nulment of the June 12 th 1993 general elections in Nigeria. Encouraged by its readers, the magazine was constantly at loggerheads with the military government. Again, security agents would seize thou- sands of copies of editions of the magazine, while several of its reporters were arrested and jailed. The News magazine - the youngest of the three news magazines was also persecuted by the military government. For instance, one of its prominent editors was arrested and imprisoned by the Abacha government in 1997 for publishing a report that criticized the military administration. The News was