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Dec 7, 2022Keywords:
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Main Article Content
Corpus study of the choice of personal pronouns in social media chats among tertiary students
Abstract
Purpose: Sociolinguistics variables such as age, gender and social class, among others, are said to bring the difference in the ways humans communicate. In this essence, this study investigated how age brings out the difference in the use of pronouns between three generational groups
Design/Methodology/Approach: Group WhatsApp chats were collected from three generational groups of students based on their willingness to give it out for analysis. These three generational groups are postgraduate students and undergraduates (Level 100, Level 400). These groups were randomly collected from over four hundred (400 students of the University of Ghana and the University of Cape Coast in Ghana based on convenience. A quantitative research design was adopted for this study with the help of a corpus tool (AntConc) to analyse the huge data gathered based on percentages.
Findings: This study found out that postgraduates and undergraduates (Level 100) use the first-person singular pronoun but postgraduates, especially those who represent the older generation tend to use the first-person pronoun more often while the second undergraduate group members (Level 400) use the third person pronouns. The study, per the findings, concludes that people tend to affiliate with others when they are young and lose group affiliation as they grow.
Research Limitation: The study was limited to WhatsApp group chats of university students within the undergraduate and postgraduate academic levels who permitted their chats to be used. This resulted in a narrow scope for the groups used.
Practical implication: The study reveals the preference or choice of pronoun usage among people based on their ages and the groups they affiliate more with. People may thus become more conscious of the choice they make of pronouns for usage as they become older or affiliate with older people.
Social Implications: the study re-examines existing literature on the use of adverbs, especially personal pronouns. Since many studies have been done on the use of adverbs, this adds a new strand of knowledge to existing ones on the subject.
Originality/Value: It provided empirical data on the demographic, precisely age characteristics of the subjects used for the research that affects their choice of personal pronouns among themselves and others.
