In post-authoritarian democracies, commemorative speeches serve as crucial sites for reinforcing national cohesion and legitimising state power, yet they remain largely understudied in political discourse analysis. Addressing this gap, this article investigates the metaphorical construction of political meaning in President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s 2024 and 2025 Democracy Day speeches, framing presidential rhetoric as a highly institutionalised form of professional discourse. The aim is to examine how metaphor functions as a cognitive, communicative, and stylistic resource in presidential rhetoric. Drawing on an integrated pragma-stylistic framework combining Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), Speech Act Theory (SAT), and Stylistic Theory, the study uncovers how metaphors frame national history and construct leadership legitimacy. The corpus, totaling 4,875 words, was analysed using the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP). The analysis identified 22 active metaphors (14 from 2024; 8 from 2025) grouped into six thematic domains: rebirth and struggle, war and resistance, living democracy, light and vision, economic restoration, and sacred destiny. Findings reveal that these metaphors operate as pragmatic tools for reframing political struggle and mobilising citizen responsibility. Specifically, rebirth and struggle metaphors construct national resilience. Journey and light imagery provide forward-looking frames that guide public expectations. Economic metaphors simplify complex reforms by framing hardship as structural renewal, and sacred metaphors elevate democratic practice within moral registers resonating with Nigerian socio-cultural values. Ultimately, the study demonstrates that metaphor in commemorative discourse performs vital ideological work, shaping how citizens interpret democratic progress and national identity while executing the organisational objectives of state leadership. By analysing a neglected genre of Nigerian presidential rhetoric, this study expands existing scholarship on African political discourse and highlights the relevance of a triangulated pragma-stylistic approach for understanding metaphor as a layered discursive phenomenon.

This study addresses the strategic use of emphatic means in English promotional discourse, used by automotive manufacturers to underscore the strengths of their premium and top-tier vehicles in a highly competitive global market. Promotional brochures rely heavily on emotive language to shape consumer perceptions. The primary aim of this research is to analyze the specific linguistic units involved in generating intensification and emphasis. This encompasses the use of highly positive evaluative meaning (HPEM) and true hyperbole as persuasive tactics designed to amplify the perceived value of the automobile in the consumer’s eyes. The empirical material comprised comprehensive promotional brochures (n = 10) representing nine luxury and premium car brands published over the previous five years. Using a continuous sampling method, a targeted corpus of 578 contextual speech segments, accounting for roughly ten percent of the total brochure text, was compiled. The methodology integrated contextual, stylistic, semantic, and quantitative analyses to interpret and categorize the extracted linguistic data. As a result of the analysis, seven distinct linguistic categories of intensification were identified. Listed in descending order of frequency, they include: adjectives and adverbs expressing maximised qualities (53%), pragmatic intensifiers (27%), comparative and superlative forms (14%), abstract nouns (9%), verbs (6%), and a minimal presence of idioms and metaphors. The findings indicate that promotional texts use intensification to link basic transportation to coveted lifestyle values, such as luxury, superior quality, and outstanding performance. Notably, complex cultural imagery is deliberately minimised, presumably to ensure a seamless persuasive impact on an international target audience. The study demonstrates theoretical and practical relevance by deciphering the evolving mechanisms of persuasion in global advertising. The findings establish a practical foundation for developing cross-cultural communication and translation skills for students specializing in linguistics, public relations, and marketing, specifically regarding the adaptation of English emphatic speech segments into local languages.

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly expanded its functions and become widely used in the creative sphere, giving rise to numerous ethical and legal issues. Scientific and everyday perceptions of self-learning computer programs, as well as public opinion regarding their prospects, are objectified in popular science discourse. Examining linguistic fragments from the perspective of their pragmatic potential allows for a deeper understanding of the benefits and risks of machine intelligence at the current stage of social development, which determines the relevance of this study. The aim of the article is to identify and describe the strategic patterns of verbalizing perceptions regarding the creative capabilities of artificial intelligence in modern German popular science discourse. The research material comprises 200 linguistic fragments selected via continuous sampling from the publications of the German-language online media outlet Tagesschau in 2021–2025. The article analyzes the main strategemes employed in the framework of information and persuasion strategies, aimed at shaping readers’ perceptions of AI’s creative potential in the fields of music, literature, visual arts, and cinema. The primary research method is pragmatic interpretation, which aims to establish the deeper meanings of utterances based on extralinguistic context and involves examining lexical and grammatical structures as a means of representing the author’s intent. The analysis of the results has shown that the strategemes of rejection, doubt, and approval are widely represented in popular science discourse, contributing to the formation of a critical attitude towards AI and its outputs. On the one hand, there is a cautious and even hostile attitude towards machines, linked to the lack of clarity regarding their status within the existing copyright framework and the ambiguous quality of the works produced. On the other hand, there is a positive societal attitude driven by the new creative horizons opening up. The effectiveness of the identified strategemes is explained by the German linguocultural community’s strong focus on laws and regulations, quality and innovation, as well as an awareness of their actions.

Existing scholarship on Nollywood extensively explores how female identities are constructed and contested. Though these studies have offered valuable data on gender portrayals, few studies have employed a detailed discourse-analytical lens to examine how female resistance is performed and narrated through language, especially in the context of institutional communication and economic power structures. This study examines how gendered power relations are constructed, challenged, and reimagined within academic and workplace environments in Kunle Afolayan’s Citation (2020) and Swallow (2021). It explores how language operates as a site of ideological contestation, where female characters negotiate institutional and interpersonal authority, resist patriarchal silencing, assert economic autonomy, and subvert traditional gender norms. Adopting a qualitative design, the study purposively sampled 50 discourse excerpts from the two films, focusing on scenes where women articulate agency, resistance, and self-definition. These excerpts were analysed using key elements of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, particularly the concept of lexicalisation, to identify how speech acts, lexical choices, and discursive positioning reflect and resist hegemonic gender ideologies. Five major themes emerged from the analysis: (1) power struggles and resistance to patriarchal authority; (2) challenging sexual violence and institutional silencing; (3) discursive construction and legitimisation of female professional authority; (4) economic autonomy and resistance to gendered dependency; and (5) subversion of gender norms and masculinities. The findings reveal that the female characters in both films are not passive recipients of patriarchal control but active agents who use language to assert their voice, reclaim space, and resist domination. Through strategic lexical choices and assertive discourse, these characters challenge the normative scripts of womanhood and reshape the ideological terrain of gender in contemporary Nigerian cinema. This study demonstrates how Nollywood, as a popular cultural medium, can function as a discursive space for gender critique and transformation.

Communication models in modern educational discourse are undergoing active transformation driven by digitalization. The shift of communication between teachers and international students to social networks and instant messengers replaces the strict vertical hierarchy of classroom interaction with a more flexible, “horizontal” type of communication. Examining the integrative nature of personal Internet discourse is of great relevance for developing effective teaching methods. The study aims to identify and describe the linguodidactic potential of the personal Internet discourse of a university teacher of Russian as a Foreign Language (RFL) realized through social media. The empirical basis comprises a corpus of 71 text messages extracted from the correspondence between foreign undergraduate students (from China, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam) and their university RFL teachers via the VKontakte social network and the WeChat and Telegram instant messengers. The study employs a comprehensive methodological framework, including discourse, contextual, semantic, and linguostylistic analysis, alongside purposive sampling and the analysis of pedagogical interaction. The analysis of communicative practices revealed that informal correspondence maintains the institutional framework of the educational environment, thereby forming a specific hybrid type of professional discourse. The authors propose a classification of student-teacher messages, identifying three dominant typical models of communicative situations: informing, persuading, and urging to action. It is established that a pronounced perlocutionary (linguodidactic) effect is realized within these models. In the online environment, the teacher not only addresses organizational issues but also acts as a model of literate written speech, purposefully and tactfully correcting students’ lexical and grammatical errors outside of class time. Results of the study show that personal Internet discourse serves as a crucial professional tool for shaping the language environment. Integrating linguodidactics into daily online communication reduces the psychological barrier for international students, increases their motivation, and develops intercultural communicative competence through natural language practice in real-life situations.

Literature on work readiness increasingly highlights the critical need for graduates to successfully integrate into specialised professional discourse communities, particularly as institutional communication becomes more complex in the digital era. However, prevailing employability models, predominantly derived from Western contexts, often emphasise self-efficacy as the core psychological mediator. This study critically examines the universality of such models within the sphere of institutional communication in a developing economy. The objectives are to (1) test the direct influence of professional communication skills, digital literacies, and experiential learning on work readiness, and (2) utilise an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design (QUAN → qual) to explore the limitations of self-efficacy among Generation Z university students transitioning into the Indonesian labour market. The quantitative phase surveyed 277 students, analysing data via PLS-SEM. The subsequent qualitative phase used in-depth interviews (n=15) to unpack unexpected statistical outcomes. The quantitative results indicated that communicative competence (including the clear articulation and persuasion of ideas), digital skills, and experiential learning significantly drive work readiness. Crucially, however, self-efficacy failed to function as a mediator. The qualitative findings elucidated why this paradox occurred: coping with institutional communication and hiring practices in Indonesia demands strict pragmatism. Students prioritise producing tangible communicative artefacts (e.g., professional portfolios, language certifications) and tapping into informal institutional networks (social capital) far above internal psychological confidence. This study advances the literature by providing robust empirical evidence from a non-Western context. It challenges the universal application of self-efficacy theory, proposing instead that the demonstrated mastery of professional discourse and active participation in institutional networks are more potent predictors of employability. These findings offer vital implications for teaching foreign languages for specific professional purposes, suggesting educators must prioritise authentic, task-based language instruction that yields verifiable communicative outputs over abstract confidence-building exercises.