Spellings, Pronunciation and CMC: A Study of Selected Nigerian Tertiary Institution Aspirants' Facebook Group Posts

Abstract

Facebook as one of social media platforms, has been a useful channel or medium for dissemination of information. It is a widely used medium of communication between two people or among a group of people. 73% of Nigerian active internet users are active on facebook (Opeibi, 2015: 213). The chatting-spirits of Nigerian tertiary institution aspirants call for attention because they are expected to display some level of competences in the cyber space. The features of the posts of these aspirants can either be termed standard or non-standard because of unstable styles that are linked with computer-mediated communication (henceforth, CMC). This is evident in Crystal (2006: 244) when he argues that the language of the web is difficult because it 'falls uneasily between standard and non-standard. Moreover, the spelling and pronunciation of each word posted by each aspirant on the group chat have different linguistic features - spelling and pronunciation that cannot be linked to either the source language (SL) or target language (TL). For example, a Yoruba-English speaker, who uses spelling and pronunciation that do not belong to either Yoruba or English. The Yoruba name 'omofoso' is spelled 'Hormorforshor' in English. This occurs as a result of using the phonemes of English for Yoruba spelling of the MT, most especially Yoruba names. Mispronunciation at times makes these aspirants to have wrong spellings. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to identify individual cyber spellings and their pronunciations.