A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE SYNTACTIC FEATURES AND COHESIVE DEVICES IN THE COLUMNISTS’ USE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN NIGERIAN NEWSPAPERS

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Department of English and Linguistics

INTRODUCTION The languages used by journalists enable them to create and maintain relationship with the target audience or readers. In doing this, journalists perceive the world correctly through the power of language. The creation of relationship between them and the audience is done through the language that the reader can understand. It is usually through the language of journalism that communities get their information (Rhetorica, 2010). The language of the print media by extension the language of journalism is not the same with the language of medicine, law, engineering etc. It has a different language usage entirely because journalists use their own kind of register that is only peculiar to the media profession. Crystal and Davy (1969) explain that journalese language is an important aspect of journalism, because it tends to be explicit and precise devoid of jargons. As a rule, journalists do not use long sentences while a short one will serve.

However, every newspaper has its own style. The different styles adopted by the different newspaper houses means the form of the language adopted to meet their target audience. The basic quality of the Language of Journalism is clarity, and its most desired effect is for the language to be understood. This language serves as a watching to the reader because it is the language used that determines what the reader can get from the story.

The simplicity of thelanguage of journalism makes the reader to have confidence in the kind of print media he choose to read, because the reader believes that what is being reported is the truth. Journalists in their use of language make use of terms that are understood among them. It is the peculiarities of the language used that sets apart the field from others. For instance, words and phrases like „watching‟ „man, 25, drowns in well‟ „As INEC‟s deadline clicks; this does not really connote the real interpretation that an individual outside the profession can easily understand. The language of the media is used in such a way that the language is used to erase the barriers between the producers of the news and the consumers thereby fostering a good relationship between them. Statement of the Problem Newspaper writing derives its meaning from the word "News" and the word news refers to a story that has never been seen or heard. Before the invention of newspaper, official government bulletins and edicts were circulated at times in some centralized empires. In ancient Rome, government announcement bulletins were made public by Julius Caesar. They were carved on metal or stone and posted in public places (Wikipedia, 2011). Commonly, newspaper the world over is a useful tool for promoting literate communities, because of its invaluable functions of informing, educating and entertaining. According to Cheyney (1992), Newspaper is the textbook that provides up to date information on local, state/provincial national and world affairs; the most current analysis and criticism on executive and legislative decision-making; the latest in music, theatre, television and even columns and comics to make people laugh. Newspapers are among the most accessible texts available to the vast majority of people " literate, illiterate, young and old, students, workers, elites and peasants in any community. This is because every category of reader mentioned above can find something they care about inside the newspaper‟s pages. Academic American Encydopedia (1989) describes newspaper in a broad sense as an unbound publication issued at regular intervals that seeks to inform, analyze, influence and entertain. Hynds (1975) provides nine criteria for classifying newspaper. Some of these are frequency of publication that is a newspaper can be published at various intervals but usually appears weekly or daily; time of publication, purpose, circulation, geography, method of production and intended audience, etc. The universal format of a newspaper according to Babalola (2002) presents information in a predictable way. In a straight news story, the headlines give the reader the main idea of the story, the lead paragraph gives a summary of the story, answering the important newspaper questions " who, what, when, where, why and how the remainder of the news story provides additional details and the least important information at the end of the story. Language use in Newspaper reporting and indeed in reporting issues by respective columnists in newspapers, like any other form of language use for mass communication and public orientation, should take cognizance of rules that govern the use of the language. This is referred to as syntactic rules. The rules of syntax of any language regulate the way the language is used to provide common understanding and acceptable utterances and constructions. Therefore, meaning of a written or spoken discourse resides in the way and manner the writer or the speaker observes the rules of syntax of that language.

As users of English language as a second language, the columnists of Nigerian Newspapers, and indeed other article contributors, are faced with dilemma of selecting the theme on which to write and the choice of how to put it in a way that an average user of English language in Nigeria could understand the message the written discourse is conveying. Reconciling these two important ingredients of writing by the columnists and indeed most users of English language becomes a problem that Liu (2000) says it plagues many English users as second language (ESL). This according to Malgwi is manifested in ESL writing as incoherent ideas, misuse or insufficient use of functional connectives and deficiency in content lexical ties. These features of ESL writing were earlier described by Oluwadiya (1990) as cited by Malgwi (2007) that learners and indeed users of English language in Nigeria write they way they speak and the resultant effect is the production of text that are full of colloquialism, awkward sentences, careless punctuation, mechanical errors, wrong word formation, poor use of homonyms and homophones, use of super flux adjectives, adverbs and prepositions, inability to use grammatical rules of agreement and concord and so on. Both people with good language proficiencies and learners of English language in Nigeria write and read articles in newspapers. The models of writing learners read in these papers may contribute significantly in shaping and reshaping the language abilities and skills of such learners and indeed all other readers. Therefore, the style of language use in newspapers need to be evaluated and analyzed to help both writer and readers to understand the ways it is used by the various papers. This provides the need for a study to be carried out on a syntactic analysis of the language use by columnist in Nigerian Newspapers in order to find out how the columnists use the language. Aim and Objectives of the Study The aim of the study was to analyze the syntactic features of the use of language by columnists in Nigerian Newspapers. In order to achieve the aim, the following objectives were drawn:

1. To examine the prevalent syntactic features used by the columnists in their articles.

2. To identify and analyze the phrases and clauses used by the columnists in treating the theme of their discourses to the readers.

3. To identify the sentence types used by the columnists with the view to discuss the nature of the sentences and how they help in relating what they have for the readers.

4. To identify and analyze the cohesive devices that the columnists use to make their ideas coherent.

Research Questions The following research questions were formulated to guide the study:

1. What is the syntactic features use by the columnists to address their audience?

2. What are the phrases and clauses used by the columnists in treating the theme of their discourses to the readers?

3. What are the sentence patterns and structures that help the columnists in relating what they have for the readership?

4. What are the cohesive devices the columnists use in the articulating their subject matter of the columns?

METHODOLOGY

This study was basically on the language of newspaper columnists in some selected Nigerian newspapers. It was therefore, a corpus based study that analyses the language used by the columnists to assess how they present their contributions. Descriptive and discursive approach was adopted in this study. Being a corpus based analysis, the selected texts were presented, analyzed and the identified syntactic features and cohesive devices were discussed. It was paramount to adopt the descriptive study because it exposes linguistic features as used in it is natural context. The corpus on which this study was based consisted of selected columns from five selected Nigerian newspapers which included: The Daily Trust, New Nigeria, The Nation, The Punch and the Leadership Newspapers. Two columns were selected from each of the five newspapers based on systematic sampling which made up ten texts. As there were numerous newspapers, the selection of the corpus was carried out using convenient sampling technique. The convenient sampling refers to the ease by which the texts are obtained. It is the availability of the newspapers to the researcher that determine their selection. There are different approaches to the stylistic analysis of texts but for the purpose of this study Leech and Short‟s (1985) approach would be adopted for the analyses. The method is based on linguistic checklist that focuses on the analysis of literary texts which can as well be applicable to nonliterary texts. The checklist consists of four (4) categories as follows: lexical category, grammatical category, figures of speech and context and cohesion. The Leech and Short (1985) approach is adopted because it provides the detail levels of analysis. Crystal and Davy‟s (1969) linguistic levels of analysis which encourages focusing on graphetic and graphology, phonetics and phonology vocabulary and Grammar or syntax was adopted. The descriptive method used was therefore eclectic. These approaches helped to look at language the use; the variations, how the columnists generally select language etc.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

In this section, the texts in the corpus were analyzed and discussed under the following headings: Syntactic Features The study of how words are combined together to form phrases and sentences is referred to as syntax. Radford (1997) opines that syntax studies the level of language that lies between words and the meaning of utterance; that is, sentence structures. It is the level that mediates between sounds that someone produces and organizes into words and what they intend to say. The following are the syntactic features identified and discussed. Use of Phrases A phrase is usually a group of words that denote a single idea and form a separate part of a sentence, but not containing a subject and predicate. It is a string of words that form a grammatical unit, usually within a clause or sentence, Ewuzie (2009). They are used by the columnists to achieved different purposes in communication contexts. The text from leadership newspaper of Friday July 15, 2011 contains prepositional phrases used possibly to draw the attention of the reader on distance and time in history.

While in the federal Government College, Enugu, in the early 70s, my primary mode of transportation from Kaduna rail to Enugu was the train. The rail track that runs from Kaduna " Kafanchan " Makurdi "Enugu to Port Harcourt was very active. Trains were on time, and reserved coaches for young students from all over the country were common place. In the text, phrases are stylistically used by the writer, possibly to colour the story and catching the attention of the reader in order to develop a curiosity that will make him see to the end of the story. The prepositional Phrases in the above texts depicting distance and time include: „in the federal government college; „from Kaduna to Enugu; „in the early 70s; on time:The writer did not bring out clearly what he wants to say but these phrases depict specific distance at a point in time that the writer covered by rail transportation. Furthermore, special use of phrases it can also be seen in an article in the New Nigeria of Monday July 4, 2011, how phrases are used as a style of the writer " I carried a small basket, in front of me, wheeling a shopping trolley was a senator from….In front of us, was the women sanitary ware tray, he parked different type of pads as they are so called." The prepositional phrases "in front of me" and "in front of us" are as a matter of importance show a physical relationship between one and another. "in front of me" for instance shows a relationship between the person who carried the basket, the narrator and the person wheeling a trolley, a distinguished Nigerian Senator. This relation is unusual in Nigerian context. The phrases „in front of me‟ and „in front of us‟ are used in the text to indicate the proximity of the writer to the scene of the incidence that he got his story from. These indicate that the writer was really present at the place of the incidence he was narrating. Use of Clauses Clauses according to Oluikpe (2002) are group of words which contains a subject, a verb, a modifier and occasionally an object. It is classified into an independent and a dependent clause. The independent clause sometimes called a principal or main clause is actually a simple sentence, a complete sentence. The dependent or subordinate clause on the other hand, is joined by a conjunction to a principal clause. It depends on the principal clause in order to fully communicate. The following text is studied to analyze this concept. I learnt they were disappointed that he was a turncoat. How could anyone be disappointed at El-Rufai? A man who is capable of any emotion is capable of any betrayal.