CLASSROOM GRAFFITI: INVESTIGATING LANGUAGE AND COGNITION

This qualitative study investigated classroom graffiti in connection to language, meaning and cognition. The aim was to unearth the intersection between the inscriptions on the walls of classrooms, the cognitive processes involved in such discourse and the context. The theoretical orientation hinged on a combination of cognitive discourse analysis (Tenbrink, 2015) and socio-semiotic approaches of language study (Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999). Through the purposive sampling technique, 40 classroom graffiti were captured from the classroom walls at Swedru School of Business, a senior high school in the Agona West Municipality in the Central Region of Ghana. The graffiti were captured with a Samsung smart phone camera within the months of February and March, 2023. The findings revealed that the following themes (ideologies) were expressed in classroom graffiti: violence/threat, vulgarity, warning, nickname, love/encouragement and awareness, with violence/threat being the most recurring ideology and awareness the least. It was concluded that there is a strong connection between graffiti and cognition and evaluating the form of language in any socio-cultural setting is synonymous to evaluating the cognitive tendencies of the members of such community.