DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2018.v06i11.019

Pages: 2167-2177

Using Norman Fairclough’s three-tier model of discourse as social practice, this paper analysed nominal groups describing conflict agents in the reports of the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) from the Nigerian Tribune and Daily Trust Newspapers within the broad tradition of Critical Discourse Analysis. At the description stage, the nominal groups were analysed using the experiential structure of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar. The interpretation and explanation stages found the formal features of Epithets, Classifiers, Things and Qualifiers of the nominal groups with semantic patterns that are consistent with the ethnically motivated sentiments associated with each newspaper. The cumulative effect of the discussion reveals that the violent actions of the group were portrayed as ‘civil’ by the Nigerian Tribune and ‘criminal’ by Daily Trust respectively.