ABSTRACT

Facts have been established by researchers and they justify that the English used in Nigeria is a variation of the British English (BE) and not a deviation from the norms of BE. This is an attempt to investigate the extent to which Nigerian columnists use the lexico-semantic features of Nigerian English for their reportings. This work has adopted the lexico-semantic variation of Nigerian English as identified by Babatunde (2001) as our working parameters alongside our data which are randomly selected dailies in the months of April, May, August, November and December 2010. It is evident that the socio-cultural background of the Nigerian people is captured by Nigerian English. Nigerian speakers find it preferable to use the Nigerian English, with all its local flavours because most of them are incompetent in the use of English language and also because of the socio-cultural context of the Nigerian society.

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL BACKGROUND

1.0       INTRODUCTION

Change is often a noticeable occurrence in all living languages. Language speakers exhibit dynamism in various ways. Every language is meant for a particular group of people however, there are occasions where a language features in a foreign environment making new words emerge and some lexical items might even be lost overtime in such language.

Obviously, man who makes use of language to communicate and convey meanings has the nature of change in him. This seems to account for the change experienced in language.

Language is used to enhance effective communication and the effectiveness of its usage goes a long way to generate the effective meaning of expressions.

1. 1. This material content is developed to serve as a GUIDE for students to conduct academic research work
2. 2. As a source for additional understanding of the subject.
3. 3. As a source for ideas for your own research work (if properly referenced).
4. 4. For PROPER paraphrasing (see your university definition of plagiarism and acceptable paraphrase)
5. 5. Direct citing (if referenced properly)
Thank you so much for your respect to the authors copyright.