Victoria Odunola Alabi, a professor of English Semiotics and Stylistics, University of Ilorin, has said it was imperative for lecturers and students to venture into the fields of semiotic and stylistic mode of communication to achieve desired effect.
She said it was presumed that people interact in different languages including symbols, signs, texts, sounds among other means to express opinion for better understanding and mutual benefit.
Alabi stated this Thursday evening while delivering the 254th inaugural lecture of the University, titled, ‘Cocoons of the Meanings of Signs and Styles in Semiotics and Stylistics.’
Semiotics, according to her, describes signs, interpretation, and it has to do with how meaning is created through words, images and sounds while stylistics is the study of the style of non-verbal and verbal discourses.
Examples are smoke as a sign of fire, cloud as a sign of an impending storm for sailor at sea, and a flushed complexion as a sign for fever, for a physician, knock at the door, a sign that someone is by the door and so on.
She noted that the world was full of signs and their meanings therefore, everyone should be sensitive to semiotic apparatuses and the meanings that can be generated from them in written, text and spoken as well as in dream.
Alabi added that, “semiotics underscores the fact that the world is suffered with many signs in culture, literature, ethnography, etc, attention should be paid to this and we should take note of different signs in whatever we do and wherever we find ourselves to explore and savour the rich underlying meanings of discourse.
“Both semiotics and stylistics as cocoons are figuratively speaking, enveloping comfortably and sounding myriads of meanings of signs and styles respectively.”
The inaugural lecturer who was the first female professor to deliver lecture from English Department, emphasised that to communicate effectively and efficiently for development, “annual seminars should be organised on campus to promote language use on stylistics and semiotics for effective communication for teaching and non-teaching staff.
“Semiotics with its tremendous significance value; greater attention should be paid to the existence and importance of semiotics in all discipline especially performing arts, biology, mathematics, law, medicine, nursing, business and so on.”
