LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF THE LANGUAGE OF THE NIGERIA POLICE FORCE: A CASE STUDY OF SOKOTO METROPOLIS

Abstract

In the present day Nigeria, the quality of the English language spoken by Nigerians is perceived to have been deteriorating and needs urgent attention. The proliferation of books and articles in the recent years can be seen as the native outcrop of its received attention and the recognition as a matter of discourse. Evidently, every profession, occupation or trade has its own variety of language for effective communication. In view of this, the Nigeria Police Force, Sokoto, a law enforcement agency under the Federal Republic of Nigeria adopts the English language as its official language and in addition to the English language also has other languages in use. Although the members of the Nigeria Police use the English language, the degree of their proficiency is dependent on the level of education of each police officer. This is to say that different varieties of the English language are used within this community. The thrust of this research work is to highlight the linguistic features of the language of the Nigeria Police Force as used in the police journals and their everyday interactions. It tries to evaluate their use of the English language: how efficiently it has been used. This evaluation would be based on the phonological and syntactic analyses. In the light of the analyses conclusions were made on the linguistic features of the Nigeria Police Force, Sokoto. Also this community would be looked at as a speech community because it has its own language apart from the English language which is intelligible to its members. The errors committed would be evaluated through the use of the concept of error analyses. Finally, this would be followed by the conclusion and recommendation.