Stylistic Choice of Sentences and Clausal Patterns in “Daily Trust” And “Sahara Reporters” Newspaper Editorials

Abstract

The paper investigates the stylistic choice of sentences and clausal patterns to establish the selection that writers of editorials make from the available sentence types and clausal patterns. The aim is to find out whether the stylistic choices they make are a manifestation of individual editorials or a trend of modern writers of the editorials. To do that, twenty-four sentences have been chosen from “Daily Trust” editorials and “Sahara Reporters” of 2021. The sentences are described in a tabular form according to the sentence type, number of clauses in a sentence and how the clauses are related. The analysis reveals that the two paper editorials have the same choice of complex sentences far more than other types. The editorials also have similar ways in which the clauses relate one to the other as most of the clauses are related through rank shifting and embedment. Also, neither editorial has clauses that are related through coordination. This implies that the stylistic choice of the sentences of the editorials is a manifestation of the editorials of the modern time. They however differ in the number of clauses that the majority of the sentences have. While “Daily Trust” has most sentences with two clauses, “Sahara Reporters” has four to eight clauses in a sentence. This means the sentences in “Daily Trust” editorials might be understood easier. The study recommends that less number of complex sentences should be used and more simple and compound should be selected to facilitate comprehension.