SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE USE IN SELECTED NIGERIAN NEWSPAPER CAPTIONS AND EDITORIALS

The English language in Nigeria has been one of the major means of communication, basically because of the heterogeneous nature of the Nigerian society. The English language in Nigeria has become one major tool of uniting the diverse cultures in Nigeria and this is reflected in various areas of human endeavours, be it in politics, the military, the educational sector, the civil service, commerce and even in the mass media. And the English language in the hands of the mass media, especially in the print media, has always been used as a tool of communication. It is in light of this fact, that this study was set to investigate the syntactic use of language as it relates to newspaper captions and editorials. Consequently, the research was anchored on Chomsky‘s Transformational Generative Grammar of 1957 and Kachru‘s 1985 Three Concentric Circles. This was so because Chomsky‘s Transformational Generative Grammar took care of the linguistic aspect of the study, while Kachru‘s Three Concetratric Cirlce took care of the socio- linguistic aspect of the study. In the light of the foregoing, this study examined some peculiar features associated with newspaper captions and editorials that are common with selected Nigerian newspapers especially as revealed by the data groups. The newspapers used in the data groups were; The Sun, The Nation, Daily Trust, Leadership and the Guardian. The methodologies that were used in carrying out this research are the tabular and bar charts. The tabular method ensured that data were presented in simple and clear form, the bar chart helped the researcher to display the proportion of categories of data with respect to the entire data in summary form. The issues that were investigated in this study were; Determiners, Prepositions, Subject-Verb Agreement, Acronyms and local Nigerian usages: coinages and transliterations. The data analysed revealed that the data groups hardly use determiners especially in the area of captions and they also had challenges in the use of Prepositions. In the area of Subject-Verb Agreement, it was discovered that the data group had little difficulty in this regard. The data groups showed a high level of use in the area of Acronyms, as the Acronyms were reflection of the Nigerian environment. In the use of coinages and transliterations, there were high percentage rates of these instances, as their direct borrowings of Nigerian words into the English language. The conclusion of this study shows that there is a tripartite use of the English language in Nigeria: SE – Standard English, SNE – Standard Nigerian English and ANE – Acultured Nigerian English. The study finally recommended a further investigation of language use in the print media that should pay particular attention to semantics and pragmatics.