Thematic Perspectives and Meta-Schematic Analysis of the Speeches of the Nigerian Minister for Health on the COVID-19 Pandemic
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Keywords

Thematic
Schema
Move
Macrostructure
Superstructure

Article Number

056

Abstract

The composition of English speeches has become a more significant component of educational materials. Public speeches are particular genres that are varied according to the communicative goals of the speakers, which are accomplished by using various schematic structures. It has been discovered that speakers vary in how they organize the strategic elements of the speech macrostructure, superstructure and microstructure in their persuasive writing. The three required steps are predetermined for the speech writing's structural completeness, but there is a lot of room for creativity and flexibility in the steps. There is a distinction between deductive and inductive reasoning since cultural norms will always have an impact. Nonetheless, it has been demonstrated that the contrast between the two ways of thinking in various cultures is complementary. Therefore, it is suggested that mastering the sensitivity and aptitude to discern the communicative goals of particular genres, encouraging a speaker to use imagination in schematic structures, and challenging conventional teaching and learning methods of writing will be crucial for speech writing. This article is limited to institutionalized or formal situations and conditions in health-related speech delivered by the Minister of Health in Nigeria. This research, in consequence, is concerned with the study of discourse analysis in Text Analysis. This study analyses the transcription of the speech. The text analysis is based on Van Dijk’s design, in which the unit elements of the analysis are divided into three parts: macro-structure, superstructure, and microstructure. The ones which have been analyzed in this paper are limited and focused only in Macrostructure (Thematic) and Superstructure (Schematic). The Nigerian health minister's addresses to the country during the COVID-19 pandemic are the source of the data for this paper. The two speeches that were chosen for analysis have the thematic and schematic structures analysed using the descriptive method of data analysis.
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