r. Mohammed Ayodeji ADEMILOKUN
Professur für Anglistische Sprachwissenschaft    
Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Fakultät Sprach-, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften

Dr Mohammed Ademilokun holds a doctoral degree in political discourse analysis from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, where he currently teaches Discourse Analysis and Applied Linguistics. He is currently visiting the Chair of English Linguistics with Prof. Claudia Lange for 3 months (April-June).

He has received prestigious fellowships such as Fulbright fellowship, African Humanities Programme Dissertation Completion fellowship and Georg Forster Postdoctoral fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. His publications have appeared in reputable journals such as Discourse and Communication, Discourse, Context and Media, Discourse and Interaction, Research in English and Applied Linguistics, Journal of Pan African Studies, International Journal of Society, Culture and Language, Language and Semiotic Studies, Ibadan Journal of English Studies, Journal of English Scholars Association of Nigeria, The African Symposium, among others.

What are your main interests as a researcher? Which topics do you focus on?

I am interested in discourses in social contexts, especially discourses that have socio-political significance.

What was your most interesting research topic so far?

The Discourse of Social Transformation in Nigeria

What does your current research focus on?

Discursive Construction of the 2020 EndSARS Protests in Selected Nigerian Newspaper Editorials and Opinion Articles

The present study focuses on the 2020 EndSARS protests in Nigeria. The EndSARS protests marked a watershed in the protest culture in Nigeria owing to its exclusive organisation and execution by the Nigerian youth. While the protests have been examined from sociological perspectives, linguistic enquiries on the protests are scanty. The present study seeks to examine the representation of the protests in newspaper editorials and opinion articles in selected Nigerian dailies. Data for the study comprise six newspaper editorials and six opinion articles selected from The Punch and The Guardian being major newspapers with wide readership in Nigeria that featured editorials and opinion articles on the EndSARS protests. The data spanned the whole of October 2020 being the time of the protests and the peak period on media representations and discussions of the protests. The data for the study will be analysed using van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach to critical discourse analysis and van Leeuwen’s (2008) social actor theory. The study intends to show how the media perspectivised the protests through newspaper editorials and opinion articles.

Which book did you recently read? / Which movie/series did you watch recently?

Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis