TABLE OF
CONTENTS
CONTENTS PAGES
Title Page i
Certification ii
Dedication iii
Acknowledgements iv
Table of
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
1.1 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY 1
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 3
1.3 OBJECTIVESOFTHESTUDY 3
1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 4
1.5 DEFINITION OF TERMS 4
CHAPTER TWO
2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW 7
2.1 ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION 7
2.2 THE
HISTORY OF ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION IN NIGERIA 13
2.3 COMMUNICATION 16
2.4 COMMUNICATION AND BILINGUALISM 18
2.5 CODE-SWITCHING 22
2.6 ELECTRONIC MEDIATED COMMUNICATION AMONG 25
NIGERIAN UNDERGRADUATES
2.7 THE NIGERIAN UNDERGRADUATES AND SMS 28
2.8 THE
NIGERIAN UNDERGRADUATES AND FACEBOOK 30
2.9. THE
IMPACT OF ELECTRONIC MESSAGING ON LANGUAGE
AND COMMUNICATION OF NIGERIAN
UNDERGRADUATES 32
CHAPTER
THREE
3.0 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY 36
3.1 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 36
3.2 COMMUNICATION ACCOMMODATION THEORY (CAT) 36
3.3 CODE-SWITCHING 41
3.4 METHODOLOGY 44
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA
PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
4.1 SMS TEXT 1
45
4.2 SMS TEXT 2 48
4.3 SMS TEXT 3 50
4.4 SMS TEXT 4 53
4.5 SMS TEXT 5 55
4.6 SMS TEXT 6 57
4.7 SMS TEXT 7 60
4.8 SMS TEXT 8 62
4.9 SMS TEXT 9 64
4.10 SMS TEXT 10 67
4.11 FACEBOOKPOST1 71
4.12 FACEBOOK POST 2 77
4.13 FACEBOOK POST 3 82
4.14 FACEBOOK POST 4 86
4.15
FACEBOOK POST 5 91
4.16
FACEBOOK POST 6 96
4.17
FACEBOOK POST 7 100
4.18 FACEBOOK
POST 8 103
4.19 FACEBOOK POST 9 106
4.20 FACEBOOK POST 10 109
CHAPTER FIVE
FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION
5.1 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 113
5.2 CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE 115
5.3 RESEARCH LIMITATION 115
5.4 RECOMMENDATION 116
5.5 SUGGESTION FOR FURTHER STUDIES 116
5.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 116
5.7 CONCLUSION 117
WORK
CITIED 118
APPENDIX 121
CHAPTER
ONE
1.1 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Modern technologies, particularly, the new
media, with their electronic messaging capabilities are changing virtually all
aspects of human life around the globe. Advances in science and technology in
the last decade – particularly micro-chip dependent technology such as
computers, lasers, the internet, satellite, videophones etc. have helped in
advancing the frontiers of globalization from which Nigeria is not isolated.
The impact of these new emerging technologies is felt even in developing
countries which are grappling with serious language problems as a result of
socio-cultural and linguistic diversities. This new mode of communication
appears to have captured a large clientele of the youths who adapt more easily
to change. The youths of today live in a world characterized by the dynamics of
electronic messaging which affects their communication mode as well as their
writing and which also make their life more complex.
The
complex situation in which the young people are struggling to find direction in
their lives or simply to survive and improve their living conditions and
develop and improve their identity has been given various names. Some call it
the information age, while others prefer the term techno-culture or
techcapitalism, global media culture or simply globalization, referring to the
dialectic process in which the global and the local exist as ‘combined and
mutual supporting principles’. The idea behind all these terms is that across
the globe, ICTs are playing a vital role on young people’s lives and in the
society at large.
Electronic
messaging therefore came as a result of social needs which are anchored on easy
and fast communication. It is perhaps the most consummate among the youths
because of the common form of interaction it provides. They have learned to
coordinate and indeed co-micro interaction via the mobile phone and internet.
Electronic Mail, a new written-language register; In a study of with French
speaking adolescents; Olga et al observed that “Adolescents seem to have
largely appropriated these new communication tools, including electronic mail
‘Teens and technology’, a survey conducted by the New Internet and American Life
Project on 1100 young people, “electronic mail ranked on top and was used by
89% of online teens”(2).This interprets that electronic messaging gives the
youths a source of interaction that is not mediated by parents as in the case
with the traditional landline telephone. The Nigerian youths as part of the
global community have contributed to popularizing the social use of texting and
have developed a linguistic and manual dexterity in the composition of
messages.
Two
aspects of the Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) text based communication
which the youths employ for the purpose of fast and easy communication are
those done through Social Network Sites (SNS) and Short Message Service
(SMS).This they do using peculiar linguistic features that are drawn from their
dual linguistic dispositions (bilingualism).Social Network Sites include
Facebook, ICQ, Myspace, Skype etc, and according to Lee, C. while quoting Kats
et al, Social Network Sites (SNS) have led to an age of ‘perpetual contact’.
Social
Network Sites provide an increasingly important communication channel in
facilitating social connections among Nigerian youths while SMS avails them
with the opportunity of ‘on-the-go’ messaging. Awonusi in his paper entitled
“Little Englishes and the Law of Energetics”, A sociolinguistic study of SMS
text Messages as register and discourse in Nigerian English’ avers that senders
of text-messages however, confront the problem of constraint of time, money and
space. As a reaction to the constraint, text users devise various linguistic
strategies to communicate comprehensively but briefly, thereby depending on the
law of energetic. (47).
The
integration of internet services into Mobile phone has further made the
convenience of mobile phone communication easier for students. This research
therefore, attempts to examine the linguistic features of text-based computer
mediated communication among Nigerian undergraduates using sociolinguistic
theories; the study will among other issues explore the extent to which
undergraduates accommodate their interlocutors in their SMS and Facebook.
Finally, because modern technology has made it possible for youths to text and
access Facebook through mobile phone, this study will henceforth use the mobile
phone to refer to the two affordances of the computer-mediated modes of
communication, namely: SMS and Facebook.
1.2STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Many of the SMS text messages are couched in
racy, semi-formal or informal telegraphic styles occasioned by the constraints
of time and space as well as economic (monetary) considerations. Also, the use
of languages in electronic messaging is quite obscure due to the use of
peculiar bilingual abbreviations,
phonetic representation, clippings, alpha numerals, Nigerian English, Pidgin
English and indigenous languages which could be interpreted differently. These
pose a problem of misinterpretation and misunderstanding hence, there is need
to study specifically the linguistic features of electronic messaging as well
the ability of undergraduates to accommodate their interlocutors by their
language style.
1.3 OBJECTIVESOFTHESTUDY
This
research is based on the linguistic features inherent in Facebook (a social
network site) and SMS which are specific to University of Lagos undergraduates.
This study sets out to undertake critical examination of the linguistic
features of the two chosen modes of computer mediated communication namely; SMS
and Facebook. The objectives of this study are:
(1)
to classify the degree of convergence in the SMS and SNS of undergraduates;
(2) to describe how undergraduates employ
code-switching to accommodate their interlocutors in SMS and SNS;
(3) to identify how native languages affect
the accommodative ability of undergraduates in SMS and SNS;
(4) to point out the type of code-switching
employed by undergraduates in SMS and SNS;
(5)
to classify the extent to which divergence is employed in SMS and SNS;
(6) to substantiate that undergraduates employ
accommodation in SMS and Facebook.
1.4SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This study will be restricted to two modes
of computer mediated communication SMS and Facebook in mobile phones or
computer. The restriction to the two is imperative because it has been
discovered that the University of Lagos students are often involved in SMS.
Also, Facebook, which students mainly access for socialization reasons, has
become a substantial communication pattern among them. Ten SMS messages and ten
Facebook Messages extracted randomly from undergraduates of University of Lagos
will be used as data for this study. In doing this Communication Accommodation
Theory (CAT) proposed by Howard Giles will be used as theoretical framework and
the researcher will limit herself to the two major variables of CAT- convergence and divergence.
1.5 DEFINITION
OF TERMS
To
achieve the objectives of the study, we have attempted simple exposition of
some relevant concepts.
1.5.1 SMS
The
SMS is a contraction for Short Messages Service. It has become a very familiar
and widely used form of communication. An online source revealed that “short
message services (SMS), what Alabi V. rightly referred to as “the written
language of GSM” (1994), is a communication protocol allowing the interchange
of short text messages between mobile telephone devices”. Students make maximum
use of SMS to communicate written codes from one person to another. In SMS
brevity is the tool to comprehensiveness and comprehending information since it
allows a limit of 160 characters per SMS.
1.5.2
SNS
The abbreviation SNS simply means Social
Network Sites. It is an online
service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting
of social
networks or social relationsamong people, who, for example,
share interests and/or activities and people with similar or somewhat similar
interests, backgrounds and/or activities make their own communities. A social
network service consists of a representation of each user (often a profile),
his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network
services are web-based
and provide means for users to interact over the Internet,
such as e-mail
and instant messaging. Social networking sites
allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their
individual networks.
1.5.3 Facebook
Facebook
is one of the many emerging social network sites which students have discovered
as another means of communicating. It has been defined in different ways by
different people:
Facebook
is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by
facebook, inc. Since September 2006, anyone over the age of 13 with e-mail
address can become a facebook user (except countries where it is banned)
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/facebook)
According
to Wikipedia encyclopedia facebook has recorded “500 million active users in
July 2010” (enwikipedia.org/wikilfacebook). As a social network site, facebook
has “implanted a wide variety of technical features” its “backbone consists of
visible profiles that display an articulated list of friends who are also users
of the same system”.
1.5.4
Computer Mediated Communication
Computer
mediated communication (CMC) “is human to human communication using networked
computer environments to facilitate interaction”. (Pearson et al 336). CMC
differs from other types of electronic communication in the sense that
communication is transactional. “Both people involved in the CMC event are
responsible for simultaneously sending and receiving messages.”(Pearson et al
337). However, it uses electronic channels to facilitate communication.
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