A CORPUS PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF NIGERIAN BORROWED PRAGMATIC MARKERS “Padi” and “Gan”

ABSTRACT

This study conducted a corpus pragmatic analysis of the bilingual discourse-pragmatic markers “padi” and “gan” in post-colonial English. It examined the origins, meanings, spelling variations, frequencies, collocational patterns and functions of these markers as evident in English as a second language context, specifically, in Nigeria. The data for the study were instances of “padi” and “gan” which were drawn from the Nigerian component of Global Web-based English (GLOWBE-NG). This corpus was accessed using inbuilt lexical software on the corpus’ site. Also, corpus analysis and the postcolonial theory were used to interpret and explain the retrieved instances of both bilingual discourse-pragmatic markers from the Nigerian component of Global Web-based English (GLOWBE-NG). The study found out that “padi” originated from Malaysia but has been adopted into Nigerian English while “gan” is peculiar to the western part of Nigeria, specifically the Yoruba’s. It also revealed that “padi” has its spelling variant as “paddy” which is predominantly used to conform to the norms of the conventional English orthography. Moreover, the study found out that both markers are frequently used for identification, emphasis and as intensifiers. They are, however, less frequently used as address term and appositives, as well as comparison, integration and emotive markers.