Introduction
The advent of new information and communication
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.
40
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
active 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
41
(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.
42
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
43
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.
44
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,
which he adapts to his study of Kegites’ English. These
features are semantic extension, semantic shift, coinages,
lexical borrowing, alphabetism and narrowing of meaning.
This study, however, draws on earlier categorization of
text messaging (Shoki and Oni 2008) and Taiwo (2008) for its
data categories, while the unit of analysis are different lengths
of transactions representing interactions (for IM) and a-unit
message culled from the sampled text messages of the
respondents.
Methodology and Corpus
In this study, we adopted content analysis for the quantification
of the manifest signs. The data for this study were natural oneto-
one instant messaging (IM) exchanges on Yahoo! Messenger
program™ retrieved from undergraduate students of three
Sociology of English in Nigeria
49
Nigerian universities who were taking courses in Use of
English and five manually written (as they were) recent text
messages i.e. SMS. Subjects were asked to record these in sheet
of papers provided for them. At the end of the writing session
the first 75 messages submitted were re-typed in word
processing for analyzing.
The three universities were University of Ibadan,
Ibadan, Nigeria and Ladoke Akintola University of
Technology, Ogbomoso, Nigeria and Osun State University
(the Ikire campus), Nigeria. These three institutions were
selected on the basis of convenience. The subsets (mostly fresh
students with science and humanities backgrounds) were
purposively selected for the study. The choice of student
population for the study is informed by research which reports
that students constitute more than 70 percent of the Net users in
Nigeria (Oni, 2002). These subjects were persuaded by the
researcher, who also happened to be their full and part-time
lecturer to forward, as an attachment, logs of their chat
conversations on Yahoo! IM program to the email account of
the researchers for language and media research purposes. The
choice of an attachment format as against the regular copypaste-
and-save method for the IM was to retain all the textual
features of the interactions which were vital to the analysis. The
retrieval rate was high, and in the first two weeks of the
Akande, A. & Odebunmi, A.
50
announcement, over 150 logs of instant messages on diverse
topics and of various lengths, were downloaded. These were
exchanges between/among Nigerians. The log-files were
printed and the exchanges numbered to differentiate each
distinct line of discourse. For the ease of analysis (due to the
size and formulaic nature of the exchanges) 75 instant
messages, representing half of the exchanges retrieved in the
first two weeks of announcement, were purposively selected
and subsequently sampled for the task of the study. This data
gathering procedure facilitates anonymity of the subject and,
consequently, reliability of the data because most of them
construct pseudonymous identities for e-chat and their e-mail
addresses.
Presentation and Discussion of Findings
For the first dimension, instances of abbronyms (after
Odebunmi, 1996) which include acronyms, abbreviations, and
other multifarious shortenings (such as alphabetism and alphanumeric
surrogates) were accounted for across the two sets of
data. These represent the linguistic signs. Subsequently,
percentage representations of both the non linguistic and
linguistic items were presented. The findings are presented in
table 1 and 2:
Sociology of English in Nigeria
51
Table 1 showing percentage distribution of IM and SMS
per transmission.
S/N CMC Features % Distribution per
Transmission
IM’ing (N=75)
2715 words
Texting
(N=75) 10745
1 Abbronyms 52 (17%) 620 (74%)
2 Vocal Segregates
(emotext & vexts)
45 (14%) 14 (2%)
3 Ellipses (…) 40 (13%) 23 (3%)
4 Pidgin (as
expressions)
26 (8%) 19 (2%)
5 Neologism (slang) 24 (8%) 13 (2%)
6 Contractions (e.g.
can’t)
74 (24%) 117 (14%)
7 Emoticons 9 (3%) 2 (0%)
8 Code switching 16 (5%) 2 (0%)
9 Code mixing 26 (8%) 24 (3%)
252 834
In Table 1 above, texting has the predominance of CMC
with differential rate of 3.3. This is evident in the abundant
representation of abbronymization (abbreviations, acronyms
and various other multifarious lexical shortenings) 74%,
Akande, A. & Odebunmi, A.
52
compared to that of IM’ing with 17%. Text messages averaged
8.2 words, while IM transmissions averaged 6.9. Recall that for
IM transmissions, sequencing of consecutive transmissions is
common. Therefore, while individual text messages were
longer than individual IMs, average length of a complete
conversational turn was longer in IM due to sequential nature
of the text (threading). Thus, the average number of characters
per transmission in the texting data was also significantly larger
than in IM’ing. Text messages averaged almost 65 characters,
while the IM mean was just under 39 characters. Another factor
contributing to message length is one-word transmissions.
There were significantly fewer one-word text messages (5 out
of 75, or 6.6%) than one-word IMs (45 out of 75, or 60%).
Almost 95% of texting transmissions contained multiple
sentences, compared with 25% of the IM transmissions. The
average number of sentences per text-message was 1.2, while
that of IM was 2.7. Since IMs are commonly sent as
consecutive transmissions without added cost, this finding is
not surprising.
Due to the socio-linguistic backgrounds of the
interlocutors, Pidgin, slang code-switching and code-mixing
form part of the textual constructs of the Nigerian net users.
Their representation in the corpus further shows the informal
Sociology of English in Nigeria
53
context of the CMC written communication and uniqueness of
language use by Nigerians in these media.
Table 2 showing results of quantitative analysis of signs
NON LINGUISTIC LEXEMES LINGUISTIC LEXEMES
Emoticons, Emotexts & Vowel
Extension (vexts)
Abbronyms (Acronyms, Abbreviations
& Other Multifarious Shortening of
Lexemes
Freq. of
Occurrence
Av. Freq. of
Occurrence per
message
Freq. of
Occurrence
Av. Freq. of
Occurrence per
message
207 2.7 7.2 9.7 Instant
Messaging
97 1.2 1044 13.9 Text
Messaging
From table 2 above, we found that abbronyms had the highest
number of occurrence featuring at the average rate of 9.72 per
message for IM’ing and 13.9 for texting. Of the total number of
messages sampled (N=75) texting occurred 1044 times almost
doubling average frequency of occurrence in IM’ing with 729
times. Emoticons and vocal segregates (emotexts and vowel
extension) – all representing the non linguistic vocal
segregates, on the other hand, occurred at the average rate of
2.76 per message for IM’ing and 1.2 for texting. There is less
representation of emoticons and vocal segregates in texting
Akande, A. & Odebunmi, A.
54
4.4% per message transmission, with average frequency of
occurrence at 1.2. The frequency of occurrence for the non
linguistic signs was 207 times. This means that the total
average frequency of occurrence for all the IM textual signs is
12.48. Based on these findings, we can infer that computermediated
communication of instant messaging has its
peculiarities in the textual signs such as emoticons, emotexts,
vowel/letter extension and abbronyms, even in an ESL country
like Nigeria. Nigerian students thus construct and interpret
messages with the shared assumption of these CMC lexemes.
One can also conclude that a IM constructed by an average
Nigerian student would reflect predominance of lexical signs
(abbronyms) over visual signs (emoticons) and much less of
these occurrences for text messaging over the mobile phones.
Some of the instances of the linguistic and non linguistic signs
are presented, as extracts, as follows:
bjrealme: hw sister?
bjrealme: na you i should ask
bjrealme: una no c each order?
westsideoutlawzus2p: stop posting me joo
5 westsideoutlawzus2p: na me suppose ask u dat
bjrealme: ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
bjrealme: 8-x
bjrealme: you funny ohhh
bjrealme: no be ur babe
10 bjrealme: you go dey contact each orda now
westsideoutlawzus2p: wel no b say i no dey
here 4rm her but jst 2 ask abt her welfare
bjrealme: she should be in good condition
Sociology of English in Nigeria
55
westsideoutlawzus2p: aw abt ur admision
15 bjrealme: you don finish exams’
westsideoutlawzus2p: yes
bjrealme: we just go do post jamb
(EXCHANGE 15)
The same goes for extracts 2 (Exchanges 15). Move 7
Exchange 15 shows an instance of emoticon, moves 14, 19, and
20 show instances of abbronyms peculiar to Instant Messages
which interactants may have shared assuption of.
It suffices to say here that findings from the sampled
text corroborate results of earlier studies on some systems of
CMC, especially the email and newsgroup. It has been found
that email and e-chat have a peculiar linguistic structure
stemming from the use of multifarious word formation
processes, emoticons and abbronyms being part of this. These
signs make CMC text in Instant Messaging program to appear
more like speech than writing communication (cf. Hunnicut
and Magnuson, 2001; Sjoberg, 2001; McElhearn, 2000) and
much different from that of the text messaging. Let us consider
an extract of the sampled text messages:
Watz goan, be reminded that our
general meeting holds Tue 17/7. Also
our society harvest is same day at 9am
mass. Pls come wt gifts O! NO
SHAKING!Enjoy ya weekend
Akande, A. & Odebunmi, A.
56
Contractions (operationalized here as the use of
apostrophe and excludes the possessive case) which typically
appear in informal speech and writing are examined. The
reason for the analysis stems from the fact that this category of
contraction is shorter to type than the full forms, especially
when omitting the apostrophe. In computer-based IM,
apostrophes require only a single keystroke, while needing four
key taps on mobile phones. We calculated percent of full and
contracted forms against total potential contractions. For
apostrophes, we scored only use in contractions, not
possessives. In texting, 14% of all potential contractions were
contracted. In IM, only 24% were contracted. Mispells were not
accounted for in our quantification and these were much. Being
fresher students, it is assumed that the subjects are still battling
with the mechanics of the English language.
In the dimension for the analysis of punctuation,
punctuation at the ends of transmissions and the ends of
sentences was examined. We also tallied use of question marks
at the ends of semantically-interrogative sentences in
comparison with use of periods, exclamation marks, or
equivalent punctuation (ellipses, dashes, commas, and
emoticons) at the ends of declaratives, imperatives, or
exclamations. Texting and IM followed similar patterns, with
the proportion of texting punctuation always lower than in IM.
Sociology of English in Nigeria
57
Total sentence-final punctuation was 39% for texting and 45%
for IM. Transmission-final punctuation appeared in only 29%
of text messages and 35% of IMs. However, for transmissions
containing multiple sentences, the sentences not appearing at
the ends of transmissions had more sentence-final punctuation:
54% of text messages and 78% of IMs, Logically,
transmission-medial punctuation is more critical than
transmission-final marks in helping recipients interpret
messages. In most cases, the act of sending a message coincides
with sentence-final punctuation.
To compare question marks and periods (or equivalent
marks), we divided each corpus into two categories: semantic
questions and “other”. More question marks were used to end
semantic questions than periods (or equivalents) to end other
sentence types. In texting, 23% semantic questions were ended
with a question mark, while only 10% of “other” bore sentencefinal
punctuation. In IM, all (52%) of questions ended in
question marks, while only 41% of the remaining sentences
were punctuated. More frequent use of “required” question
marks may pragmatically highlight the request for a response
from the recipient.
Akande, A. & Odebunmi, A.
58
Conclusion
Analyses of texting and IM’ing against the socio-linguistic
backgrounds of second language user (English) much enabled
as a result of the mobility of the Internet in today’s media
landscape have shown peculiarities in the textual constructs of
Nigerian students. The paucity of emoticons and heavy use of
abbronymizations in both texting and IM corpora is not in
consonant with studies of this nature in North America (Ling
and Baron 2007) and the UK (Thurlow and Brown 2003).
However, sameness in the previous reports on sentential
punctuation in texting or IM’ing, shows the degree to which
affordances and constraints of the CMC media affect uniformly
English language constructs and meaning making in online
platforms. Findings have shown that usage patterns are hardly
contrastive. Ling and Baron (2007) notes that students often
omitted transmission-final marks (especially periods), but their
overall punctuation choices tended to be communicatively
pragmatic. The fact punctuation was consistently more
prevalent in IM than in texting probably reflects greater ease of
input in IM. It is however worthy of note that student approach
textual composition with differences in their competence level.
More so, text messages were consistently longer and contained
more sentences, probably resulting from both differential
costing structures and the tendency of IM sequences (but not
Sociology of English in Nigeria
59
texts) to be sent in series one after the end to form threads and
turn sequences. Text messages contained significantly more
abbreviations than IMs, but even the number in texting was
small.
Texting and IM’ing data, therefore, are in tangential
with respect to contractions and apostrophes: more contractions
appeared in texting, but texting used only one-third the
apostrophes found in IM. Greater use of contractions in texting
could reflect the higher tendency to use abbreviated forms to
save cost (compared with IM’ing), which in turn is in
consonance with an awkward input device of the mobile phone,
even with qwert-keyboarded phones. The same applies to
apostrophes in texting.
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