LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF THE LANGUAGE OF THE NIGERIA POLICE FORCE, ONITSHA BY UDOH, VICTORIA CHINWE REGISTRATION NUMBER: PG/ MA/2000/27938 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND LITERARY STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA JANUARY, 2010 1 TITLE PAGE LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF THE LANGUAGE OF THE NIGERIA POLICE FORCE, ONITSHA 2 APPROVAL PAGE I, Professor S. M. Onuigbo, of the Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, do approve this project as having fulfilled the requirement for the award of the Master of Arts in English and Literary Studies of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. --------------------------------- Supervisor 3 CERTIFICATION This is to certify that this project is an independent study carried out by Udoh, Victoria Chinwe with the registration number, PG/ MA/ 2000/ 27938 of the Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and that this work has not been presented in part or full for the award of any diploma or degree in this or any other University -------------------- Supervisor -------------------------------------- Dean, Faculty of Arts ---------------------------- Head of Department ------------------------------------- External Examiner 4 DEDICATION To: My husband, Udoh Chukwuma (You are a great man). My parents, Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Ofoegbu (Your efforts are highly appreciated). 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am highly indebted to my beloved husband, Mr. Chukwuma Udoh, who all these while carried the burden of seeing me through this programme. Indeed I owe you a lot. I must, most humbly acknowledge the stimulating encouragements of my parents. You people are great. I will forever be grateful for all you have done for me. May I pay a tribute to you, my children: Ifechukwu, Chidera, Necherem, Bmdom, Simdi and Somtoo. You people are the source of my pride, I love you all. Also may I extol my superior Prof. Sam Onuigbo, for his invaluable patience and continued encouragement. May the good Lord reward you abundantly. I am also particularly grateful to Mr. Nwoma, Romnus. Indeed your type is rare, I owe you a debt of gratitude. I also acknowledge the moral and financial support of my brothers and sisters: Charles, Chike, Ngozi and Ifeyinwa, you people are great. For other forms of assistance, I express my indebtedness to Dr. Ngozi Onwuka, Chinelo Ezekulie, Ify Obi, Melda, Chibuzor Onukwo, I count on each of you. Finally, I give thanks to the almighty God for his abundant mercies. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 1.2 Background to the Study………………………………………….. 1 1.3 Objective of the Study…………………………………………….. 6 1.4 Statement of the Problem………………………………………….. 9 1.5 Relevance of the Study……………………………………………. 10 1.6 Scope of the Study………………………………………………… 11 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Language and Communication…………………………………….. 12 2.2 Varieties of the English Language…………………………………. 15 2.3 The Nigeria Police Force as a Speech Community………………… 23 2.4 Error Analysis………………………………………………………. 25 2.5 Level of Education………………………………………………….. 28 CHAPTER THREE 3.1 Area of Study………………………………………………………. 30 3.2 Theoretical Framework…………………………………………….. 30 3.3 Method of Observation…………………………………………….. 31 3.4 Instrumentation…………………………………………………….. 32 3.5 Method of Data Analysis…………………………………………... 32 CHAPTER FOUR 4.1 Phonological Analysis…………………………………………….. 33 4.2 Error of Substitution………………………………………………. 34 4.3 Error of Omission…………………………………………………. 36 4.4 Error of Addition………………………………………………….. 37 4.5 Syntactic Errors…………………………………………………… 38 CHAPTER FIVE: Conclusion………………………………………... 46 7 ABSTRACT In the present day Nigeria, the quality of the English language spoken by Nigerians is perceived to have been deteriorating and needs urgent attention. The proliferation of books and articles in the recent years can be seen as the native outcrop of its received attention and the recognition as a matter of discourse. Evidently, every profession, occupation or trade has its own variety of language for effective communication. In view of this, the Nigeria Police Force, Onitsha, a law enforcement agency under the Federal Republic of Nigeria adopts the English language as its official language and in addition to the English language also has other languages in use. Although the members of the Nigeria Police use the English language, the degree of their proficiency is dependent on the level of education of each police officer. This is to say that different varieties of the English language are used within this community. The thrust of this research work is to highlight the linguistic features of the language of the Nigeria Police Force as used in the police journals and their everyday interactions. It tries to evaluate their use of the English language: how efficiently it has been used. This evaluation would be based on the phonological and syntactic analyses. In the light of the analyses conclusions were made on the linguistic features of the Nigeria Police Force, Onitsha. Also this community would be looked at as a speech community because it has its own language apart from the English language which is intelligible to its members. The errors committed would be evaluated through the use of the concept of error analyses. Finally, this would be followed by the conclusion and recommendation. 8 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY Human beings use language as a means of communication and communication becomes meaningful and effective especially when it comes from the same speech community. In fact, language is very significant because it is a tool for identifying people, their origin, culture or even social statues. Gimson (1970) defines it as “a system of conventional signs used for communication by a whole community”. As a medium of communication, language does not exist in a vacuum, but operates in a context of situation. These contexts determine the variation of language. Language is very crucial for human survival because it is the most important and most effective instrument for communication. It is the bond that holds societies together. Consequently, a society must afford shared cognitive experiences and orientations, hence Aberle et al in Morrish (1980) emphasizes the need for a society to develop a corpus of cognitive orientation which will provide meaningfulness to social situation as well as a sense of stability derived from identity of experiences.On the other hand, for motivation to be sustained in individual and group activity, a society must provide a means of communication for its members. One of the essential elements of living in a society or in a community with others is the means of communication, and this can be achieved through language. One can invariably say that language is the principal means of communication. The primacy of language cuts across every sphere of life: law enforcement, technology, science, politics, religion as well as other interpersonal spheres. 9 The police use language as every other field does in the performance of their activities which includes enforcement of law and order, prevention and detection of crime, protection of life and property and, other numerous activities. This work is a linguistic inquiry into the language of the Nigeria Police Force, Onitsha, in Anambra State. The Nigeria Police Force, Onitsha, is just like every other Police Force in Nigeria. What is obtainable amongst the Police Force in Onitsha is also obtainable in the whole of the Nigeria Police Force. The Nigeria Police Force, Onitsha, has its main station which is referred to as the Central Police Station (CPS) in the heart of the town with many other police posts in many parts of the town. Because of the multilingual nature of the country, members of the Police Force are drawn from different ethnic groups and all these people use the English language as their official language for mutual intelligibility. This study investigates linguistic features of the English language of the Nigeria Police Force. It examines their use of the English language. The English language is observed to play the role of official language in many countries of the world, and in Africa, it is the second language of most countries including Nigeria. It is the language of law, education, law enforcement and politics. It is the dominant medium of interaction in different professions. The language of the Police Force studied in this work is the Standard English as used by the Nigeria Police Force. This study will also discuss in the brief the use of jargon by the Nigeria Police Force. 10 1.2 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY This study being a linguistic inquiry into the language of the Nigeria Police Force, aims at: 1. describing the language situation in the Nigeria Police Force, Onitsha. 2. the variety of the English language found in this community. 3. the context in which they used, with whom and for what purpose. 4. the syntactic and phonological structure of the English language used in the community. The Nigeria Police Force, a Federal law enforcement agency, is found all over Anambra State, with quarters and barracks in different parts of the State. Nigeria is a multi-lingual nation with police officers drawn from different ethnic groups and languages. The languages spoken in the Nigeria Police Force, Onitsha, comprises Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Ibibio, Efik, Kalabari, Izon, Pidgin and several other Nigerian languages. The official language used for the spoken and written activities is the English language. The English language is used for parades and drills, for lectures and seminars, for court records and for most discussions between the officers and members of the public. The Nigeria Police Force in the performance of her social functions of law enforcement employs language as a medium of interaction, preservation and dissemination of information. Communication of message both within and outside the Police circle is done in English. The diatypic variety of the language of law enforcement can be seen in the various activities and entries by the Police like reports, minutes, statements, parades, drills, and so forth. 11 Going further, since this study is a linguistic investigation into the language of the Nigeria Police Force, it tries to evaluate the use of the English language in this speech community; how efficiently it has been used. This evaluation will be based on the levels of linguistic analyses and these are phonology and syntax. Also the Nigeria Police Force in their use of the English language produces varieties. They are supposed to be using the Standard English that is the Received Pronunciation standard but this is not so. Their proficiency largely depends on the level of education of the individual officers. The English language in Nigeria has many varieties. This is as a result of the contact between the English language and the local Nigerian languages and because the English language is used within the local setting, with local ideas and local attitude to life. Another reason is that the English language is a second language. According to Saville-Troike (1982) “ The range of varieties used for auxiliary national purposes even within a single country such as Nigeria runs from pidgin English on one extreme, through regionally marked varieties ( Hausa English, Yoruba English, Igbo English) to educate Nigerian English and finally to varieties which very closely approximate British or American norms”. These varieties abound in the Nigeria Police Force, Onitsha. Their use of the English language will be analyzed in the chapter four of this study. Also chapter two, this perspective on varieties would be discussed elaborately. 12 1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM It is pertinent to note that a lot of work has been done on language and other professions, but not much has been done with respect to the language of the police force. Therefore this study sets to: identify the varieties of the English language used by the Nigeria Police Force; determine the problem in the linguistic features of the English language of Nigeria Police Force; find out the causes of these problems; and finally, suggest how these problems can be solved to enhance the effective use of the English language by the Nigeria Police Force. 1.4 THE RELEVANCE OF THE STUDY This study is designed to provide an insight into the unique use of the English language by the Nigeria Police Force and to bring out the influences on the choices and uses of the language. Ijomah (1973) states that “ the vocabulary of language reflects the physical and social environment of the people”. This study also points out the importance of language as well as its flexibility in the context such as the one under study. This research will help Nigerians to appreciate language of the Nigerian Police Force and this will, no doubt, enhance the relationship between the Nigeria Police and the public. It will also help the government in reshaping the Nigeria Police Force with regard to the issue of qualification. The government, through this study will also put into consideration organizing workshops and seminars for members of the Police Force to help them improve on their use of the language. 13 1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY This study will cover the Nigeria Police Force, Onitsha. In Onitsha, there is a main police station referred to as the Central Police Station (C.P.S.) and many other police posts situated at different parts of the town. For the purpose of this study, two police posts and the main police station, that is, the Central Police Station ( CPS) which is the headquarters will be used. 14 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION We will speak and use language but seldom do we pause to think about language. According to Naldman and Brooks as quoted in Azikiwe (1998), language is “ a learned systematic symbolic vocal behaviour, which is culturally acquired as an exclusive mark of man, by means of which a social group co-operates”. Language permeates all parts of society and does more than simply describe reality. Ifensor (1996) defines language as a system of arbitrary vocal symbol by means of which people within a social group interact. Language provides society with a means of socializing its members and a mechanism for role taking. Mead in Morrish (1980) stresses the importance of language in the understanding and taking the role of others. In the development of the self it is essential to have a mental grasp of the consciousness or those around us. Meads postulates that: Language in its significant sense is that vocal gesture which tends to arouse in the individual the attitude which it arouses in others, and it is this perfecting of self by gestures which mediates the social activities, that gives rise to the possession of taking the roles of others. Language is used in all human spheres of life, politics, government, trading, mass media, education and science. The function of language is inexhaustible. It helps to preserve the culture and history of a community. It is the vehicle used to preserve the culture and history of a community. It is the vehicle used to impact knowledge and information to 15 express our feelings, emotions and thoughts. It enbables one to conduct oneself socially and may even influence the behaviour of people. Chomsky sees language as the mirrow of mind. He perceives language as an essential tool through which human beings are studied. It has been stated that language and communication are interdependent. They are like siamese twins. One cannot be divorced from the other. Communication is a process of interaction between persons, group or states. Okonkwo (1980) defines communication as “a process in which people share information, ideas, and feelings. It is a process whereby information is transmitted from the sender to the receiver through the use of common symbols. These common symbols can be represented aurally or orthographically. Communication relies so much on the language for effectiveness and the language is the vehicle for communication. Language is a common tool with which human beings communicate in both formal and informal situations. Language signifies a human system of communication used in speech and writing involving vocabulary and sentence structure. Adetugbo (1980) categorically states that communication is the only tool for interaction between two or more people. Language, be it oral, literal or symbolic is the only means of communication. “All human societies and institution are made possible only by means of possession of language”. Language is said to be a human characteristic which exists in both spoken and written forms and both are of great importance to this study. 16 The Nigeria Police Force uses language as every other field does in the performance of the variety of activities which includes prevention and detection of crimes, parades and drills and numerous and other activities. All these activities function both in spoken and written language. Gimson (1970) states that: Other aspects of language which would require investigation includes the variations of the same language in the different regions and social classes (dialectology) the influence of context and style upon the form and substance of the language; the behaviour of human beings in their production and perception of language (psycholinguistics) in which it is spoken (social-linguistic). This will be discussed more elaborately in the next section. This study focuses on the use of the English language of the Nigerian Police Force. The research also delineates the influences on the language as used by the Nigeria Police Force in order to justify that this is a Nigeria variety of the English language. 2.2 VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE The English language is Nigeria’s official language and serves as the second language to most of its Nigerian users. As a second language, its acquisition makes Nigerian users of the language either bilingual or multi-lingual. As the official language, the English language has come to be seen as probably the most important language because it is the language of government, business, commerce, banking, mass media and most of inter-ethnic communication. 17 In all these, the major function of language is personal and social, but directive, referential and imaginative functions are performed in varying degrees by the use of the English language in Nigeria. Brosnaham in Banjo (1986) states: English is the language of commerce and law, politics and administration, of education and culture at all level above the local. And adequate knowledge of English is an indispensable requirement for anyone to use above or live in any wider context than the village. The English language is a second language to most of its Nigerian users. As a result of this, the users are either bilinguals or multi-lingual. A variety of the language according to Jowitt (1991) is “one of many general and complete language system, each possessing characteristics that distinguish it from other systems without requiring it to be classified as a different language”. These varieties arise from the fact that a Nigerian transfers the English language the tonal habits of his first language. The second parameter is the education parameter. He posits that the type of English spoken and written by Nigerians varies according to the level of general education attained. According to him, there is a correlation between level of education attainment and level of proficiency in the English language. Linguistics is the third parameter used to distinguish varieties of the English language. Here groups of linguistic features are distinguished according to the degree of deviation which they manifest from exoglossic standard. Linguists have been theorizing on these issues which Brosnahan as quoted in Banjo identifies as four levels of the Nigerian variety of the English language. 18 Level I: Pidgin; spoken by those without any formal education. Level II: Spoken by those who have had primary school education. Most speakers belong to this level. Level III: Spoken by those who have had secondary school education. This level is marked by increased fluency, wider vocabulary and conscious avoidance of level 1 usage. Level IV: Close to Standard English but retaining some features of level II and III. Spoken by those with university education. A close look at these levels reveals that Brosnaham based his schema on education which is the second parameter as stated by Jowitt. Banjo (1996) points out that this analysis which is based only on education is somewhat too simplistic and therefore attempts instead a classification based on grammatical features and degrees of approximation to a world standard as typified by standard British English and Received Pronunciation. Banjo proposed four varieties in which educational attainment does play a part but it is not the only determinant. These four varieties by Banjo correspond Jowitt’s linguistic parameter for distinguishing the English language varieties according to Nigerian usage. Varity 1: Banjo states that this variety is spoken by semi-literates. Their educational is not higher than elementary. Their spoken language has a lot of carryover interference from LI because of inadequate mastery of the language. They compliment their speech with a lot of gesticulations and other Para-linguistic feature like facial expressions. Banjo contends that their intelligibility depends on these features. As far as grammaticality is concerned, they have a lot of problems with English syntax as well as phonology. It is also observed that their use of the English language is socially 19 unacceptable in Nigeria, it is internationally unintelligible and in some cases it is not much different from pidgin. The tendency is that the speakers of this variety resort to pidgin. Variety 2: This variety is spoken by about 75% of Nigerians. Banjo posits that their syntax can be regarded as passable. They transfer some phonological elements of their first language, especially the dental signs. This variety is intelligible in Nigeria but it is not very useful for external communication. This is because the speakers fail to make vital phonemic distinction particularly between such minimal pairs like: hit / hit / heat/ hi:t/ hat / hæt/ heart/ ha:t/ spot/spt/ sport/ spכ: t/ pull/ pul/ pool/ p :l/ ship/sip/ sheep/si:p/ Variety 3: This variety is spoken by about 10% of Nigerian. They can make phonemic distinctions with the minimal pairs. To most Nigerians this variety is similar to British English but has certain obvious Nigerian features like accent, voice, prosody (intonation, stress). Variety 4: According to Banjo, this variety is close to international model and is used by a majority of 5% of Nigerians. It is mostly used by those who are naturally brought up in England or children whose parents are English. Though this variety is internationally intelligible, it is often socially unacceptable in Nigeria. 20 Banjo’s variety 1, is quite distinctive from Brosnaham variety 1, which is in fact pidgin and not English. Banjo’s 1 on the other hand is described as the variety used by Nigerians who have internalized the language as a result of the exigencies of their occupation. Much of it can be described as broken English, though it should be clearly distinguished from pidgin. Not surprisingly, the most striking feature of this variety is phonology. Granted that none of the three major Nigerian languages, Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo has up to ten pure vowels, and only Hausa has a diphthong, Received Pronunciation on the other hand has twenty-two vowels made up of twelve pure vowels, eight diphthongs and two diphthongs. This accounts for lack of proficiency by Nigerians in the use of the English language. It has rightly been observed by Banjo (1996) that as most Nigerian languages do not have the vowels /æ/, /ә/ and /۸/ for example, /æ/ is substituted for /ә/ while in a word like bitter / bitә/ , / כ/, is substituted by /۸/ and a/ is /ә/. British Received pronunciation /ә: / is replaced sometimes by / כ: / as in /w כ:st/ for Received pronunciation /wз :st/ or /e/ as in fest/. Furthermore, there are similar, substitutions of consonant phonemes and these vary from language to language. While some languages like Hausa and Igbo do not have the phonemes /z/, Yoruba does not have it and so a Yoruba variety 1 speaker would substitute /s/. Similarly, for the speakers of some languages including Yoruba /f/ is substituted for /v/ and /s/ for /ts/. Breaking up of the English consonant clusters is a common practice among interlocutors of some Nigerian languages like Yoruba and Igbo. 21 It will also be important to mention the contribution of Festus Adesonye to this discussion of the varieties of the Nigerian English. Adesonye (1973) undertook a study of the Nigerian written English and concludes by positing three varieties. This is important to this study because some of his views will be applied in the analysis of the written language of the Nigeria Police Force. Going further, Banjo (1996) states that Adesonye’s variety one represents the English language of those with only primary education. They transfer a lot of linguistic features from their first language to the English language. Variety 2 consists of those with secondary education. There are few occurrences of their mother tongue interference in their English language. Variety 3 according to Adesonye as stated in Banjo (1996) is the apex of the varieties. As far as he is concerned, there is hardly any feature that can differentiate this kind of English and other educated varieties elsewhere. This variety is used by University graduates. The varieties of the Nigerian English as used by the Nigeria Police Force will be analysed in chapter four of this study. These varieties arise because of the level of education of most of the Police officers, and also because of the different ethnic backgrounds of the Police Force. 2.3 THE NIGERIA POLICE FORCE AS A SPEECH COMMUNITY Fishman (1978) defines a speech community as ‘one’ all of whose members show at least a single speech variety and the norms as a social group which may be either 22 mono-lingual or multi-lingual held together by frequency of social interaction patterns and set off from the surrounding areas by weakness in the times of communication. Halliday (1978) also defines it as a group of people who themselves as using the same language. Speech communities may consist of small group bound together by face-to-face interaction like the Nigeria Police Force, Onitsha. Social communication within a speech community may be seen in terms of functionally related roles which are allotted to individuals within a community. Such roles include the drills, parades and so forth. The language they use for these roles forms their communication matrix. Viewed from this point, the Nigeria Police Force, Onitsha makes up a speech community with the use of the Police Jargons. They use these jargons in their day to day activities. These jargons form an important part of their communication matrix. It is the common language that is shared by all. Though they use the English language, it is not intelligible to all of them. This is as a result of education and to some extent, the mother tongue interference. Nigerian Standard English and the Police jargon are used in both the formal and informal activities. Gumper (1972) defines jargons as “Special parlances employed by certain occupational groups in the pursuit of their activities”. It is used to maintain exclusiveness; thus, making it unintelligible to outsiders. These jargons are used by these Police Officers to perform their day to-day activities and through its use; they can be referred to as a speech community because it is simply intelligible to all the members of the community. Here are some of these jargons: Olokpa Policeman (Yoruba) 23 Dankadede Sir (Master) Damsada Police Newspaper Shun standing at an attention Bade/ p’rade a group of Police Officers File to short Unload dropping of one’s gun Retere to move backwards Reading to get set to fire. 2.4 ERROR ANALYSIS Error analysis can be defined as a systematic diagnosis of the deviation from the target language by a non-native speaker so as to effect positive changes in the pedagogy of a second language. It is a linguistic deviance in performance on the part of a bilingual. Granted that the members of the Nigeria Police Force are bilinguals, in their native languages and the English language, the principles of error-analysis will be employed in this study in analyzing their English language usage. Error analysis according to Corder (1974) is “branches of codes”. The study of error or analysis of errors, he claims are part of an experiment to confirm or disprove the psycholinguistic theory of transfer. Error analysis involves the identification of and interpretation of errors based on rigorous analysis; it deals with both overt and convert errors; that is, errors that are hidden or not easily identifiable and those that are obviously interlingua and training transfer as well as error due to communication and method of learning. 24 He also contends that error analysis has to do with investigation of the language of a bilingual, with the aim of pointing out errors, in the production of the target language. There are two approaches to error analysis: the contrastive and non-contrastive approach. The contrastive approach may be most predictive at the phonological level and least predictive at the syntactic level. So many people are of the opinion or assume, following logic, that it is easy to understand, that errors made by bilinguals are caused by their mixing their native language with second language. Summarizing these views of Robert Lado contained in Wilkins (1982), he states that: The errors and difficulties that occur in our learning and use of a foreign language are caused by the interference of the mother tongue. This goes to confirm the basic assumption which underlines the idea of contrastive analysis. This assumption which traces errors in foreign language to mother tongue interference also goes further to assert that when the structures of the mother tongue and the target language are similar, the usage is not difficult. In cases where there exist structural differences between the two languages, there is bound to be error in transfer. The situation in the Nigerian Police Force is multi-lingual in which many languages are spoken and in their use of the English language; they transfer the sounds of their native languages to the English language. This transfer hinders their proficiency in the use of the English language. This transfer is as a result of the fact that most Nigerian 25 languages do not have up to ten vowels and only Hausa has a diphthong. The Received Pronunciation has twenty vowels, made up of twelve pure vowels and eight diphthongs. These abnormalities will be treated more elaborately on chapter four of this study. With the use of data, it will be shown how the police use the vowels in their native languages to make up for the ones in the Received Pronunciation and the reason for their incompetence will clearly be seen. Apart from the interference of mother tongue, another factor that hinders proficiency in the use of the English language amongst the Nigeria Police Force is their level of education. 2.6 LEVEL OF EDUCATION It is assumed that anybody that has at least a senior school certificate should speak English fluently. In Nigeria Police Force, most officers have their pos-primary school education but a considerable number have a primary school education. Only a handful of officers are graduates. Though most of them have their post-primary education, they still find it very difficult to speak the English fluently. Atiwhobbel (1991) states that Police should be versed with the language of communication which is the English language. He postulated that the mastery of this language is very important because their usage of the language affects report writing and the giving of evidence. But above all, it affects their relationship with the masses. As a result of the low educational qualification of the Nigeria Police Force, their use of the English language is not proficient. Most of them learnt this language because of the exigencies of their occupation. 26 The level of education of an officer clearly determines his ability to use the English language. It would be of great help if the government would organize seminars and lectures for Police Officers at least to train them on the basic usage of the English language. Ultimately, we discovered that there are already existing researches on what language is, its characteristics, its relationship with communication, the language of the other speech communities and professions but there is no research yet on the language of the Nigeria Police with particular attention to the problems in its linguistic features, causes of the problems and solutions. This is the basis of our research. 27 CHAPTER THREE This chapter discusses the research design for this study, the area of study, theoretical framework, method of observation, instrumentation and method of data collection. 3.1 AREA OF STUDY This research was carried out in Onitsha, Anambra State. The Nigeria Police Force has many stations in Onitsha, but out of all these, four stations were used for the purpose of this research. Some data were collected from these four Police Stations. 3.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK This work is essentially a linguistic study specifically concerned with the structure of the English language as used by the Nigeria Police Force. However, it is important to note that there is a correlation between grammatical choices and the societal function they perform. Thus, the theories of descriptive linguistics and sociolinguistics are employed in this study. Tomori (1999) believes that “modern descriptive linguistics is usually studied from the following perspectives: phonetics and phonology (or phonemics); grammar comprising morphology and syntax; and semantics. Thus, descriptive linguistics accounts for the structural organization of language from the level of phonemic to that of semantics. Sociolinguistics, according to Osuagwu et al (1997), is the study of varieties of language in the light of non-linguistic aspect of social structure. Huddson (1999) sees a linguist and a socio linguist as two separate people. According to him, the former 28 accounts for only the structure of language while the later works on the examining the social context which informs it use. The relevance of these two theories is subsumed in the fact that a study of language without reference to the society that uses it obviously rules out the possibility of finding out the social explanation which accounts for the structures that are used. 3.3 METHOD OF OBSERVATION During the collection of data for this research, the researcher was present at the eight different morning drills by the police officers. As the commandant gives instruction to the officers, the research takes down and also records their utterances. Sometimes in the process of addressing these officers, she asks questions and the answers to the questions by the officers are also written down and used as part of the data for this study. The researcher also had the opportunity of listening to their conversation as they interview suspects that are in detention. 3.4 INSTRUMENTATION The instrument for the data collection for this study was by the participatory observation. The researcher was present at the Police stations used for this study for eight times to collect and record information during different activities which includes drills, interrogation of suspects and meetings. 3.5 METHOD OF DATA ANALYSIS The method of data analysis is direct lifting of illustrative terms and sentences from the chosen articles. Not all errors are analyzed, only those that are strikingly illustrate the features investigated are made to represent the rest. 29 The method of analysis is essentially descriptive. Two linguistic levels, phonology and syntax, are of concern to the research. In the phonological analysis, the researcher looks at speech sounds as they were pronounced by the members of the Nigeria Police Force. At the level of syntax, sentences which are wrongly used are picked and analyzed, giving the right version as it is supposed to be. These included wrong expressions, concord and tense errors, omission of sentence elements and wrong use of words. 30 CHAPTER FOUR This chapter examines the linguistic features of the language of the Nigeria Police Force as used in their journals and their everyday activities like drills, parades et cetera. Two levels of linguistic analyses, namely syntax and phonology, will be considered. 4.1 PHONOLOGICAL ANALYSIS This part of study is based on the analysis of phonological errors in the English language of the Nigeria Police Force. In other words, this study sets out to identify these errors and analyze them. Many people have always believed that there is no significant difference between the phonologies of the standard of British English and Nigeria English. Thus, some say that they are basically the same. This notion however has been proved incorrect by the findings of this research. For the purpose of this study, the researcher carried out an investigation of the phonological competence of the Nigeria Police Force, Onitsha. Their competence in the articulation of the English sounds was tested and their errors were identified, classified and explained for easy understanding. It was observed that the non-existence of some phonemes in their indigenous languages provoked most of the problems with particular reference to the influence of their mother tongue on the English language. As earlier mentioned, this analysis will involve the use of error analysis. The errors committed in the use of the English language by the Police officers will be analyzed through the perspective of error substitution, error of omission, error of addition and error of over generalization as well as incomplete application of rules and ignorance of the rules of restriction. 31 4.2 ERROR OF SUBSTITUTION Inn this area, the researcher is particularly concerned with how the Police Officers substitute one phoneme with another as a result of the absence of the phoneme in their indigenous languages. This is one of the major problems most speakers of Edo, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa and Efik encounter with English pronunciation. Such problems are restricted to those traceable to the phonological interference of their mother tongue on the English language. There are some vowels and consonants which occur in English but not in these indigenous languages and as such what is obtainable is the replacement of one sound for another. From the data collected, most Police Officers find it difficult to articulate certain English phonemes such as /Ə/ Ө / ۸ /З:/ because they pronounce any word that contain these sounds wrongly. The dental fricatives /Ə/ and / Ө / are invariably replaced by the alveolar plosives / t / and / d / respectively. From the data collected, the following words are wrongly pronounced. Here are some examples: Words Wrong Correct 1. Path pat / pa: Ө / 2. Then den / ðen / 3. Father fadar / f a ðƏ/ 4. They dei /ð en/ 5. Theme tim / i:m/ 6. Thank tank / æŋҝ/ 32 7. Thorn torn / Ө כ:ŋ/ 8. Thick tick /Ө ik/ 9. Three til / Өri:/ In the same way, some vowels which we do not have in the Nigerian languages are also substituted by other sounds and the pronunciations of such words were influenced by their spellings. For example, the vowel / ۸ / which is most commonly spelt “U” as in cut, cup, “O” as in mother, blood and come is usually pronounced as / / by the majority of these Police Officers. Thus, in their speeches, they tend to mispronounce these words. Those words mentioned are pronounced as follows: 10. Cut is pronounced / k t/ instead of /k ۸ t / 11. Come is pronounced /k m/ instead of / k ۸ m / 12. Blood is pronounced /bl d/ instead of /bl ۸ d / 13. Mother is pronounced /m dar/ instead of / m ۸ Əe(r)/ 4.3 ERROR OF OMISSION In the articulation of some English words, it is observed that these Police officers tend to omit certain phonemes. This is also as a result of mother tongue interference. It is also observed that some Police Officers from Edo and Yoruba omit the glottal fricative /h/ when they occur at the initial positions. Thus, they pronounce the following words as follows: 14. Helicopter is pronounced /elikpptƏ/ instead of / helikpptƏ(r)/ 15. Happy is pronounced /æpi/ instead of / h æpi/ 33 16. Heat is pronounced / I:t/ instead of /hi:t/ 17. Hot is pronounced /bt/ instead of /hpt/ 4.4 ERROR OF ADDITION Most Police officers who omit the glottal fricative /h/ in the analysis given above tend to insert the glottal fricative where it is not required. These set of Officers are mostly from Edo and some from part of Delta State. This pronunciation problem can also be attributed to mother tongue interference. Some of such words that ate pronounced that way are as follows: 18. English is pronounced /hin ۸ f/ instead of /in۸ f/ 19. Hour is pronounced /h ә/r/ instead of / (r)/ 20. Eye is pronounced /hai/ instead of / ai/ 21. Honour is pronounced /h/ instead of / h t/ It is also observed that many of them pronounce words according to their spellings as in the following: 22. Listen is pronounced / litƏn/ instead of / lisƏn/ 23. Bomb is pronounced /bpmb/ instead of /bpm/ 24. Behalf is pronounced /behalf/ instead of / bi ha:f/ 25. Colleague is pronounced / kliki/ instead of /kli:g/ 26. Whistle is pronounced /wistil/ instead of /wisil/ In the pronunciation of past tense markers, these Police Officers pronounce them correctly when it is realized as /d/ but when it is //id/ they pronounce /ed/ while the 34 allophone/t/ does not appear in their pronunciation in most cases. Here are some examples: 27. Provoked is pronounced / provoked/ instead of / prƏvƏukt / 28. Attribute is pronounced / ætubu:ted / instead of / Ətributid/ 29. Exhausted is pronounced / egz כ: sted/ instead of / igz כ: stid/ 30. Passed is pronounced /pa:sd/ instead of /pa: st/ 31. Picked is pronounced /pikd/ instead of / pikt/ From the analysis, it can be observed that not all errors come from mother tongue interference. Most of them occur as a result of low level of education, lack of interest in acquiring the correct skill and the environment they operate in. 4.5 SYNTACTIC ERRORS Wrong expression can affect communication adversely and leave the audience confused. Accuracy in speech and writing allow for effective understanding. Syntactic errors make the English language incorrect. These syntactic errors include wrong spellings, defective punctuation, wrong use of articles, omission of sentence elements, concord and tense errors. In the journals under study, the following expressions are made. EXAMPLES: 1. The secretariat takes care of IGP’S speeches, monitors press report, and oversees the IGP’S secret Registry, Police Officers’ Wives Association, the IGP’S personal security staff, and the IGP’S Hotline. 35 The above sentence introduces a list of three action performed by the secretariat. There ought to have been a coordinating conjunction (and) joining the penultimate verb (monitors) to the last one (oversees). The sentence should be recast as follows: The secretariat takes care of IGP’S Speeches, monitors press report, and oversees the IGP’S secret Registry, Police Officers Wives Association…. 2. Recent events in some parts of the country have shown that some disgruntle elements with fissiparous tendencies have been sowing seeds of discord aimed at derailing the transition programme. The error stems from the use of the ‘disgruntle’ instead of the correct adjective which is ‘disgruntled’ used to modify the noun ‘elements’. 3. The emphasis is more on the acquitted of the innocents rather than the correction of the guilty ones. The errors above are two: a) The first one is the use of the preposition ‘on’ after the transitive verb ‘emphasize’. ‘Emphasis’ is obligatorily transitive and must be followed by a direct object. b) When an adjective is preceded by the definite article to form a nominal, it becomes plural and does not require any-s-plural inflection. Thus the use of ‘the innocents’ in the sentence is deviant. 4. “The above notwithstanding, efforts is made to teach policemen the dignity of human person and the need to treat fellow human being with equal respect”. The error above is the omission of an article before ‘effort’ which is a singular countable noun. 36 5. It is realized that as the Nigerian society becomes educated, so will it require of its police force, articulated professionals, skilled in human resource management and competent to analyze and perform its function with integrity, humility, commitment and sensibility. The first error involves the wrong use of a definite article before ‘Nigerian’ society. When society refers to a nation, it is not preceded by a definite article. The second error is the use of an intrusive comma to mark off ‘required’ from its object ‘articulated professions’. 6. “He promised to engage in total cleaning and purge of the force” There is lack of parallelism between ‘cleaning’ and ‘purge’ which are joined to form a compound structure. The correct version should be: He promised to engage in total in cleaning and purging of the force. 7. Those posted to traffic duties are known to have arbitrarily harassed motorists about the traffic rules and regulation, which they never read… “That” does not introduce a non-restrictive relative clause. The correct conjunction/relative pronoun to use is ‘which’. 8. He has to convince all and sundry that the high level of corruption in the force is as a result of alarming percentage of illiteracy in the force. An article should precede the noun ‘percentage’. It should have read: ‘an/the alarming percentage’. 9. “ The versatile inspector-General of Police, Mr. Etim Inyang is of the view that a Police boss should not collude with his subordinate to perpetuate heinous and highly pernicious activities. 37 These articles are replete with punctuation errors: a. There is the omission of a comma after the appositive ‘Mr Etim Inyang’ b. The omission of a definite of article before ‘view’. c. The misspelling of the word ‘Subordinate’ 10. “… Through the setting up of Police community committees in all nooks and crannies of the federation. The fixed expression ‘nook and corners’ should be ‘nook and corners’ so that expression is erroneously used. 11. The penchant for his men to take bribe disturbs Mr. Inyang so much that… a. There is the omission of an article before ‘bribe’ which is a singular common noun. It ought to have been: ‘a bribe or bribes’. b. The use of a comma to mark off the subject ‘penchant’ from its verb ‘disturbs’ is not correct. 12. “… recommendation from traditional rulers, are expected to be great significant’. a. The first error here lies in the fact that the subject is separated from its verb with a comma. b. The adjective significant is wrongly used in place of the noun ‘significance in that context’. 13. As an incentive in this direction, a 13 year old boy who helped the police catch up with an alleged corned robber, has been awarded scholarship tenable up to the University. a. The noun scholarship as used in this context is countable and should be preceded by an indefinite article -‘a’ 38 b. The clause ‘who helped the police catch up with an alleged corned robber is a relative clause and should not be marked off with comma. 14. “ … the chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon gave an incisive account of the goodies mapped out to improve the image of the Police Force. Here, the appositive ‘Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon’ should have been set off with two commas and not a single comma. 15. “ …Prepared by the IPO who examined the scene of crime and interrogates witnesses is known as Modus Operandi (M.O.) report The errors here are the lack of parallelism between the two verbs that form a compound structure ‘examined’ and ‘interrogates’. The correct version should be: ‘examined’ and ‘interrogated’ or ‘examines’ and ‘interrogates’ as the case may be. 16. This realization led to the formulation of the Modus Operandi (M.O.) system, which seeks to analyze according to a give formula the ingredients of crime…” The present tense form of the verb give is used to modify the noun formula instead of the past participle ‘given’. 17. Like all rules, however there are exceptions here. The error above is a concord error. “There” anticipates a plural subject to agree with the verb “are” but as seen above, the subject “exception” is singular instesd of the plural exceptions. 18. But in a given crimes, all these more tangible things may be lacking. 39 An indefinite article does not precede a plural noun in English as wrongly used above in “ a given crimes”. Finally, not all errors are analyzed, only those that strikingly illustrate the features investigated are made to represent the rest. 40 CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION The thrust of this work is the linguistic features of the language of the Nigerian Police Force, Onitsha. The Nigeria Police Force uses the English language as their official language. This work evaluates their use of the English language to determine the extent to which they can be proficient in the use of this language. The Nigeria Police Force, Onitsha is a multi-lingual community with officers drawn from different ethnic groups and languages. Some of the languages discovered amongst these officers are Igbo, Hausa, Efik, Yoruba, Ibibio, Izon, Kalabari and so forth. The English language is however the official language used in this community. In their use of this language, many varieties emanate and this is as a result of certain factors like mother tongue interference, low level of education, lack of interest in acquiring proficiency in the language. As observed, their English language is far from what the Standard English should be. Many of these Police Officers are not competent at all in the use of this language and this gives rise to many linguistic errors as stated in this work. The reason for this is not farfetched. A good number of these officers are neither graduate of English nor of other disciplines. Most of them have only first school leaving certificates; a good number of the acquired only senior school certificate. Majority of them are primary school dropouts and just a handful of them are graduates. They are simply trained on their job and no matter their length of service, they are not experts in the use of the language. The Nigeria Police Force, Onitsha is a speech community. This is established because there is need for a language which is intelligible to all the members of this 41 community. This need arises because the English language is not intelligible to all the members of this community. The language established is referred to as the Police jargon. Though most members cannot understand the English language and use it effectively, the jargon is intelligible to all the members of the community. In addition to the jargon, they also use various signs, whistle and drum languages which they use to convey information and messages which only the members of the group can understand. The Nigeria Police Force serves the public and their incompetence in the use of the language of communication constitutes a problem to the citizens of this country. It is therefore recommended that, a language school should be established in the Police College. 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