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A LEXICO-SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED DISCOURSE IN SELECTED INSTANT AND TEXT MESSAGES OF NIGERIAN STUDENTS

Introduction

The advent of new information and communicatio technologies (ICTs) has ushered in a new era of new media,signalling unbounded possibilities for language and communication studies. In actual fact, the ever increasing mobility of the Internet the world over has opened yet other dimensions to the study of language use in computer mediated environment. This has been attributed to the upsurge in the world’s telecommunication market and its antecedent penetration and adoption of the technology by the populace, coupled with the improvement of the network with the third generation (3G) mobile technology, which facilitates the convergence of the technologies of the mobile phones and that of the Internet. For instance, in 2006, Nigeria had an estimate of about 8 million Internet users, many of whom relied on

equipment at cybercafés. In 2007, Internet hosts totaled 1,968. Akande, A. & Odebunmi, A. In 2006 more than 32.3 million mobile cellular telephones and 1.7 million main lines were in use (International Telecommunication Union 2007). However, in 2010 with an estimated population of 150 million, there were 72.78 million Nactive GSM subscribers on all the major networks, with 6.69 million active CDMA subscribers. Within the estimated population of the country, there were 10 million Internet users (Miniwatts Marketing Group 2009). Of this estimation, 1.72 million Nigerians are said to be on the Facebook, with penetration rate of 1.1%. Nigeria is thus among the leading subscribers in Africa which has a total Facebook population of 17,607,440, with global penetration of 1.7% as at August 31, 2010 (Internet World Statistics). These growing trends have provided opportunity to study human interactions as they occur across the computermediated environment. However, unlike before, when the study of human-human interactions through the new media technologies of the Internet and the cell phone restricted scholarship to the investigation of language use in the immobile technologies such as the world wide web, email, Yahoo/MSN’s instant messengers (IM or IM’ing), Listserve and short message service (texting) of the global system for mobiles (GSM). In Nigeria, these features have significantly been studied against theoretical frameworks of Conversation and Discourse Analysis Sociology of English in Nigeria (Herring 2004a, 2004b), Pragmatics (Odebunmi 2009), Stylistics (Taiwo 2008) and Semiotics (Shoki and Oni 2008). It is therefore very significant to explore the implication of the mobility and ubiquity of the Internet on textual constructs and (English) language use of Nigerian in their interactions over the IM and the GSM-SMS platforms. This approach represents one of the contemporary methods of investigating human language textual constructs in computer-mediated communication.

The approach in this chapter is to observe and quantify the lexical variations which afford mutual intelligibility and meaning making of the textual constructs of sampled

interactions. Earlier studies in Nigeria IM and SMS studies have focused on the forms and functions of textual messages (Taiwo 2008), to the best of our knowledge, little or no attention has been focused on differentiating IM and SMS compositions with a view of understanding pattern of usage especially as it concerns second language users of the English language (Nigerians in this case). The central thesis is thus, to understand the characteristics of textual constructs of Nigerians as second language users of the English language, especially the lexical/sentential differences afforded by the technologies of transmission against their socio-linguistic backgrounds. Akande, A. & Odebunmi, A. An Overview of CMC Studies in Nigeria Scholarship into human-human interactions across digital

platform did not start in Nigeria until the commercialization of

the Internet and the GSM networks as earlier mentioned. This

notwithstanding, Nigerians resident within and in the diaspora,

have contributed immensely to the linguistic and

anthropological researches of computer-mediated

communication. Specifically, within the linguistic circle, giant

strides have been made. Ifukor (forthcoming) has grouped

Nigerian textual CMC activities and studies between 1990-

2010 into three broad categories viz.

(i) Web 1.0 communicative exchanges (e.g.

Bastian, 1999; Blommaert & Omoniyi, 2006;

Chiluwa, 2009, 2010a; Deuber & Hinrichs, 2007;

Moran, 2000; Ofulue, 2010; Olateju & Adeleke,

2010; Oluwole, 2009), (ii) mobile telephony and

text messaging (e.g. Awonusi, 2004, 2010;

Chiluwa, 2008; Ekong & Ekong, 2010; Elvis,

2009; Obadare, 2006; Ofulue, 2008; Taiwo,

2008a, 2008b) and (iii) social media and multiplatform

Web 2.0 discourse (e.g. Ifukor, 2008,

2009a, 2009b, 2010; Jonathan, 2010; Oni &

Osunbade, 2009; Taiwo, 2010a, 2010b) (cf. Ifukor

2011a, 2011b). In terms of technological platform

or mode in Murray’s, (1988) term, examples of

Nigerian CMC include mobile phone text

messaging (Awonusi, 2004, 2010; Chiluwa, 2008;

Ifukor, 2011a; Ofulue, 2008; Taiwo, 2008a,

2008b); Instant Messaging (Oni & Osunbade,

Sociology of English in Nigeria

2009); email (Blommaert & Omoniyi, 2006;

Chiluwa, 2009, 2010a, 2010b; Ofulue, 2010;

Olateju & Adeleke, 2010); listserv (Bastian,

1999); Usenet newsgroup (Moran, 2000); Internet

discussion forums (Deuber & Hinrichs, 2007;

Ifukor, 2011b; Taiwo, 2010a, 2010b); blog

(Ifukor, 2008, 2009a, 2009b, 2010); Twitter

(Ifukor, 2010, 2011c); Facebook (Ifukor, 2011d;

Jonathan, 2010), and surveys on CMC usage

(Ifukor, 2011a; Oluwole, 2009; Pyramid Research,

2010; Sesan, 2010).

It suffices to say that the year 2010 represents another landmark

in CMC scholarship in Nigerian due to the following four

reasons as pointed out in Ifukor (forthcoming),

First, Taiwo (2010c) published two edited

volumes of a handbook on digital behaviours

consisting of, among the collection, 16 papers

(single and co-authored) on various aspects of

text-based Nigerian CMC. Therefore, Taiwo's

(2010c) handbook represents the single largest

collection on Nigerian CMC to date. Second, it is

the same year that published works on Nigerian

social networking media (Ifukor, 2010; Jonathan,

2010) emerged. For instance, Ifukor's (2010)

paper on electoral activities by Nigerians in the

blogosphere and Twittersphere highlights the

relevance of blogging and social media to modern

Nigerian democratization. Thirdly, beginning

from his inaugural post on Facebook on June 28,

2010, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ)

experimented with what, for want of a better

Akande, A. & Odebunmi, A.

terminology, can be called the first Nigerian

Facebook presidency. On October 1, 2010 CNN

named GEJ the Facebook President. This is a

remarkable endorsement of not just the person of

the Nigerian president, but also of how a global

product (Facebook) is being appropriated for

internal governance in Nigeria. Eventually, a book

based on GEJ's interactions with Nigerian netizens

was published and titled My Friends and I:

Conversations on Policy and Governance via

Facebook (Jonathan, 2010). It is argued here that

the embrace of new media technologies by the

Nigerian government has ushered in a new era of

Nigerian politics, reflecting modern trends in

digitally-aided democratization. Finally, but not

the least, two national surveys on the digital habits

of connected Nigerians were released by Pyramid

Research (2010) and Sesan (2010) in the same

year.

Examining the thrusts of contents of the Taiwo's (2010c)

sixteen-chapter handbook in relation to Nigeria, 18.75% of the

papers (i.e. Chiluwa, 2010b; Ofulue, 2010; Olateju & Adeleke,

2010), examine aspects of Nigerian email communication for

identity construction, 419 or hoaxes, and code switching. 37.5

percent of the papers (i.e. Akande & Akinwale, 2010; Balogun,

2010; Odebunmi & Alo, 2010; Olaosun, 2010; Olubode-Sawe,

2010; Taiwo, 2010c) dwell on mobile telephony and SMS as

follows: with a view of stressing their positions on the

implications of the leprous compositions of the Nigerian

Sociology of English in Nigeria

45

students on written communication as well as contextual beliefs

in the 160-character discourse by Nigerian academics, an Ecosemiotic

examination of visual codes in mobile phone

directories, typography and orthographic conventions in

Yoruba NOKIA phone terminologies, and language mixing for

phaticity and invocations. The remaining papers (43.75%) are

concerned with pedagogical and systemic issues.

As rich as all the previous Nigerian CMC studies are,

none have focused on the differences in textual compositions of

Nigerian Internet users due to notable constraints and

affordances of the CMC, notably the mobility, synchronicity

and transmission capability of the technologies involve in IM

and SMS. This gap will hope to fill in this study.

A Brief Account of Lexico-semantic Studies in Nigeria

(English)

Lexico-semantics (lexical semantics) is an important theory of

linguistic description which has gained scholarly attention in

earlier works (cf Bamgbose, 1971; Bokamba, 1982; Adegbija,

1989; Osunbade and Adeniji, 2005). Alabi (2007), cited in

Osunbade and Adeniji (2005:46), lexical creativity, deviations

or interference have been noticed in these studies as accounting

for lexico-semantic innovations. The crux of lexico-semantics

(lexical semantics) is word description, that is, what words

Akande, A. & Odebunmi, A.

46

mean. The three levels of linguistic description of text can be

the substance, form or the context of the text (Chiluwa, 2007)

explains further:

The graphic substance is studied as orthography or

graphology. A graphological or graphetic study

focuses on the written form of the text to examine

the significance of handwriting or typography to

the general meaning of text. The form of the text is

the grammatical or lexical patterns, or the

organization of the graphic and phonic substances

to produce meaningful language. Context or

semantic is the interaction of substance and form

with the situation – a place within a framework of

human social activity wider than the text

(Gregory, 1974). “Here language transforms itself

to become a meaningful part of our human social

behaviour (Oyeleye, 1997:90). Semantics is

viewed in terms of social meaning; hence, “lexicosemantic”

is taken for granted as the general

reference to grammatical and lexical statements

and what they signify.

By and large, lexico-semantics studies the meanings of

words; and the focus is on ‘content words’ rather than

‘grammatical words’ (Cruse, 2000:25). Some aspects of lexicosemantics

have a unifying theme of the idea that only the

meaning of words in terms of their association with other words

(syntagmatic relations) is stated, while some other aspects are

concerned with relation of ‘senses’ between words (see Palmer,

Sociology of English in Nigeria

47

1996). The overall theme is that the meanings of words can be

stated.

Various works that examined meanings of words in

African English have earmarked certain lexico-semantic

innovations such as semantic shift, semantic extension,

semantic transfer, and deliberate borrowing (cf. Kirk-Greene

1971, Sey 1973, Bokamba 1982, Adegbija, 1989; etc.). With

respect to Nigerian English (NE), Jowitt (1991:130-131)

identifies eight lexico-semantics features namely local coinages

that conform with Standard English (SE) morphological

principles, extended or restricted meanings of SE words,

foregrounded SE words additional to those featuring in 2,

foregrounded SE words which have become clichés, words

derived from pidgin, loan words, slang, and stylistic usage that

differs from SE usage. Showing a negative attitude towards

NE, he calls these features constituents/indexical markers of

popular Nigerian English (PNE). According to Jowitt (ibid:63),

PNE is an English which has, in its repertoire, lexical items that

have passed through a stage of use of an interlanguage during

which they are regarded as errors and stigmatized before

having some measures of acceptability, especially among the

educated people. Referring to them as ‘types of lexico-semantic

variations’, Odebunmi (2001:70-73) also identifies and

discusses five other features of the lexico-semantic variation in

Akande, A. & Odebunmi, A.

48

NE: transfer, neologism, analogy, abbronyms, semantic shift

and extension.

Bamiro (1994) equally identifies ten categories of

lexico-semantic variation in NE: loan shift, semantic underdifferentiation,

lexico-semantic duplication and redundancy,

ellipsis, conversion, clipping, acronyms, translation equivalent,

analogical creation and coinages. Also, Osunbade (2005:64)

employs categories from the submissions of various scholars

and identifies six lexico-semantic features of Nigerian English,