An Analysis of Grapho-phonological Infelicities in the Nigerian Political Discourse

Abstract

When one fails to pronounce one’s words acceptably, the listeners may not quickly and easily grasp the meaning or significance of what is said. Consequent upon so many factors including, most importantly, the grapho-phonological incompatibilities in English, many Nigerians do pronounce their words far from what is acceptable. This is because English, unlike many Nigerian languages, does not have letter-sound correspondence. So capricious are the orthographic representations of many English sounds that analogy is practically impossible. An attempt at analogizing brings about faulty articulation of the word thereby impairing or at least delaying intelligibility. In this paper, an attempt is made to analyse some of the grapho-phonological infelicities in the Nigerian political discourse. Using the speech act theory, it is discovered that many Nigerian speeches are infelicitous and the performances unhappy. A lot of deviations are noticed due to one reason or another among which is the unavailability of many of the sounds mispronounced in Nigerian indigenous languages. Besides, unaware of the morphophonemic realizations in word extension, faulty analogies are made. Finally, it is discovered that many Nigerians do mix up certain sounds or are completely ignorant of how such a word might be pronounced. However, the problems of grapho-phonological infelicities are not insurmountable. Mental alertness, good reading and speaking habits, conscious studies of such words that pose difficulties, listening to the native or near native speakers would go a long way to improve the standard of Nigerians users of English.