Lexico-Semantic Interpretation of Pentecostal Church Posters

Abstract

This paper examines the lexico-semantic choices in the Pentecostal church posters. The researcher attempts to approach the interpretation of the Christian posters from the stylistic view point. Its meaning was made explicit using the tool of linguistics. It is a known fact, that stylistics is beneficial to both the teachers and students. Using M.A.K Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, as the analytical framework, this paper, examines the lexical semantic choices in the Pentecostal church posters.

Pentecostal church posters happen to be one of the several media of advertisement employed by the churches to disseminate information about the churches’ events to the audience/passers-by. Previous studies on the language of advertisements are concerned with the themes of commercial and political posters while the others looked at the elements of pragmatics such as speech acts and implicature etc. This paper reveals that the construction of posters (texts) is a linguistically conscious activity.