Abstract

Since its acceptance within linguistic studies, the concept of ideology has generated an unimaginable array of interest within linguistics. Linguistic scholars are of the opinion that no linguistic construction is ‘neutral’ in its real sense. As well, numerous linguistic investigations have proved that ideology is woven in our everyday linguistic interaction but none of these have been able to work within the parameters of a semantically orientated grammatical concept such as semantic map or web to show that the ideological position of some poets is evident in their linguistic strategies. This paper attempts to do so by employing the procedures of semantic web and critical linguistics to investigate the ideological positions of socially situated texts. Is mechanical discourse such as poetic rendition ideally neutral, or politically free? Or is it woven in some positions between these two limits? The contention is that no socially situated text such as poetry is ‘ideally free’ of the ideological categories of its writers and time. This paper examines two ‘new’ Nigerian poets- Ademola Dasylva and Joe Ushie, and holds that the ideological orientations of some Nigerian poets are embedded in grammatical features.

Key words: Semantic map, ideology, CDA, poetic discourse.