LAWAL Khadijat Temitope
Name: LAWAL Khadijat Temitope
Email: lawal.khadijatt@gmail.com
Office: Department of Linguistics and African Languages, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria
Academic Qualifications:
B.A. Linguistics (University of Ilorin, Nigeria, 2014)
M.A. Applied Linguistics (University of Ilorin, Nigeria, 2018)
MPhil/Ph.D(In Progress)
Areas of Specialization:
Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics, Linguistic Anthropology, Discourse Analysis, Language and Digital Communication, Computational Linguistics.
Title of M.A. Dissertation:
A Socio-Pragmatic Analysis of Political Invective Songs in Southwestern Nigeria
Title of B.A. Dissertation:
A Comparative Phonological Analysis of Owe and Ayere Dialects of Yoruba Language
Publications:
Lawal, K. T. (2026). Verbal Aggression as Identity: A Study of Impoliteness in Online Music Discourse. Trends in Languages, Linguistics and Literature Communications, Vol. 5, No. 2.
DOI: www.doi.org/10.36349/tjllc.2026.v05i02.015
Bamigbade, E. O. & Lawal, K. T.(2021). An ethnographic study of Yoruba invective songs used by politicians in Southwestern Nigeria. OPANBATA: LASU Journal of African Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, 175-184. Lagos State University, Nigeria.
Retrieved from https://lasujournalofafricanstudies.org.ng/files/1660426241.pdf
Lawal, K. T. & Abdussalam, A. (2017). A socio-pragmatic analysis of political invective songs in Southwestern Nigeria. The Postgraduate Journal of Research in Higher Education: Unilorin, Vol. 1.
Staff Profile:
Khadijat Temitope Lawal is a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and African Languages, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. She holds both her B.A. degree in Linguistics (2014) and M.A. degree in Applied Linguistics (2018) from the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. Her undergraduate dissertation examined the comparative phonology of Owe and Ayere dialects of Yoruba, demonstrating early expertise in dialectology and phonological analysis. Her master’s thesis investigated the socio-pragmatic dimensions of political invective songs in southwestern Nigeria, marking her transition toward applied linguistics and discourse studies. Her research interests focus on the intersections of language with social issues, politics, identity, technology, digital culture, and gender studies.
Her work is gaining international recognition through presentations at major conferences and publications in peer-reviewed journals. She has presented at the 53rd Annual Conference on African Linguistics and Language (ACAL) in Leiden, Netherlands (2024), where she addressed the pragmatic complexities of AI translation of Yoruba proverbs, and at the 4th International Conference on Discourse Pragmatics in Hangzhou, China (2025), where she examined verbal aggression and identity construction in online music discourse.
She is committed to research that bridges rigorous linguistic analysis with attention to social justice, and contributes to both academic conversations and real-world language policy debates in areas such as language revitalization, digital literacy, and the ethical development of AI translation systems for African languages.