The Use of Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement in Social Media Communication Among Nigerian Speakers of English

Abstract

Investigation has shown that a good number of Nigerian users of social media communicate without paying attention to the appropriate usages, and this is the concern of this paper. The study aims to examine specifically those instances where such speakers of English break the rules of pronoun-antecedent agreement in English, irrespective of whether they lack the linguistic knowledge or do that out of negligence. The research is based on the theory of Competence and Performance as introduced by the American linguist, Noam Chomsky. The data was gathered within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The survey research design has been chosen as part of data collection procedure. Six groups or sets of Facebook postings are considered based on the six local councils that constitute the FCT administration. These are: Abaji, Abuja, Bwari, Gwagwalada, Kuje, and Kwali area councils. In each of them, five (5) posts have been selected to bring out a total number of thirty (30). The posts were collected using an Android phone. In taking note of the various posts from the concerned individuals, a pen and an exercise book were readily available for the making of notes on the concord errors for subsequent analysis. And each set of the 5 is presented in a separate table. The findings as analysed show the extent to which pronoun-antecedent errors are made by second language speakers of the English language.