Analysis of Syntactic Structures in Selected Nigerian Investigative Media Reports

Abstract

This paper has analyzed the structural patterns of information in selected Nigerian media texts. Six reports drawn from Nigerian newspapers and magazines formed the corpus which was subjected under investigation. The paper employed the technique of Triangulation to form the methodology that helped in analyzing the corpus. Triangulation allows the combination of two or more models in the study of a similar data set. Therefore, Halliday (1979) and Matthiessen (2004) Systemic Functional models were adopted into an integrated theory which aided the identification and subsequent analysis of the corpus. The study discovered that different syntactic strategies have been used by the writers in communicating ideas to their readers. The result  revealed that a combination of complex, compound, periodic, loose sentence structures were predominant in the corpus, while simple sentences were in negligible use. Our investigation further showed that complex and compound sentence structures used by the writers helped in the presentation of larger issues which simple sentences cannot deliver. While the prevalent occurrence of loose and periodic sentences were interchangeably used to create suspense and at the same time end the suspense. We came to the conclusion that               the combination of these structures by investigative reporters places language above ordinary or uneducated readers with the intention to make language suitable for a target audience - those bourgeoning actors the essays are basically about.

Keywords: Syntax, Investigative news, Text and Corpus.