LINGUISTIC CUES IN THE SPEECH STREAM OF THE NIGERIAN SOLDIERS: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC APPROACH

Abstract

This study was carried out to find out how linguistic variants implicate different social meanings. The research was premised on the theory of Exemplar-based model of representation. The researcher used direct observation and interviews as instruments for data collection. Descriptive and interpretative tools were employed for the analysis of data collected. After the analysis, the researcher found that the linguistic variables such as pitch width, overall fundamental frequency (FO), speech rate, and invariance are associated with soldiers of the Nigerian Army. The research revealed that every speaker’s utterance offers linguistic information and indexes a social category and the ability of the listener to identify the observed indexical features of the speaker depends on the listener’s social experience and his perceptual acuity because lexical structure consists of detailed and linguistically rich remembered linguistic experiences which are stored in the memories of the listeners about the speakers. The work concludes that every speaker’s utterance offers linguistic information that has social significance. The work among other issues, recommends the right application of perception in the association of social category to speakers will entrench the most-sought after society’s coordinates as a way to solve social problems in the society.