Dr David Oyedepo, Chancellor, Covenant University (CU), Ota in Ogun, has appealed to intellectuals to ensure they communicate to their listeners in the language they will understand.

Oyedepo stated this on Thursday in Ota at the university’s inaugural lecture series.

A professor of Stylistics, Christopher Awonuga, delivered the lecture tagged: “What does this text mean: Stylistics and the process of interpretation.”

Oyedepo said that no matter how intelligent and knowledgeable a man is in a particular field, once he could not put his message across to his listeners meaningfully, he could not be said to have communicated to them.

The chancellor said there would always be correlation between man and language because of their dynamism, adding that this necessitated the need for man to continue to acquire more knowledge on language usage.

He said examples abound the world over where clarity of communication had resulted in ‘quality decision making’ that had shaped the society and brought about positive development.

The cleric said his calling as a communicator of the Gospel of Christ had made him traverse the world.

“Yet, I have continued to discover new challenges and gaps in my communication skills, as well as the need to address them as urgently as possible.

“This lecture of today applies to everybody.

“It is unfortunate that many of us speak but only few communicate.

“This is where the essence of meaning comes in; and I want to say you can’t be a part of a decision if you cannot communicate effectively because clarity of communication is vital in every relationship.

“This lecture will, therefore, go a long way in influencing clarity of communication, “Oyedepo said.

In the lecture, Prof. Awonuga underscored the ambivalence nature in which English personal pronouns such as: ‘mine’, ‘your’, ‘yours’, ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, ‘we’ ‘their’’ and ‘they’ are used to connote various meanings in texts.

Awonuga said he conducted linguistic analysis of some poems and five texts and found that both speakers used personal pronouns to balance their relationship with their audiences.

He said: “The reviews and analysis demonstrate that in political rhetoric, the relationships among participants in the discourse situations are mediated by personal pronouns.

“This delineates a social or political ‘space’ in which people and groups have a political position.”

In his recommendations, Awonuga advised students of English to always read the stylistic study of poetry and prose frictional texts to enhance their styles.