Department: Linguistics African and European Languages
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1
A Phonological Analysis of the Discourse of Selected Undergraduate Students of Lagos State University
Mutual intelligibility is necessary as far as communication is concerned. It plays an important role in second language teaching and learning. Without it, learners may have difficulties in getting their speeches understood and understanding others may follow the same pattern. This study grew out of the concern that effective communication is an essential component of academic and attitudinal success. The study analyses observable phonological constraints on the speech patterns of selected undergraduate students of the Lagos State University. The aim is to attempt to present phonological evidences and phonological rules to account for errors inherent in the speeches of the selected students. Fifty students from ten departments of the institution were randomly selected. A voice recorder was used to record the speeches of the students. The data collected were transcribed and analysed using Chomsky and Halle’s Generative Phonology Theory (1957) and rules were generated for each set of data transcribed. The result showed that poor pronunciation arises not only from mother tongue interference, but also from the insistence of the students to retain their dialectal idiosyncrasies. Thus, the study established that there is no significant difference between students’ spoken performance and their attitudes towards the ways they pronounced some words. The study concluded that appropriate pronunciation should not be overlooked in discourse as it is requisite to mutual intelligibility in communication.
Key words: mutual intelligibility, communication, discourse, Generative Phonology, pronunciation
