Neologisms and nonce expressions of ethnic politics in Nigeria’s “change” regime

Abstract

The paper discusses the influx of ethnically skewed neologisms and nonce expressions in the Nigerian print and online media especially in the present political “Change” dispensation. Language has, as one of its primary characteristics, productivity of new lexemes especially in the content words such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, which it does through the many word formation processes among which are affixation, coinages, acronyms and compounding, reduplication, conversion, clipping, blending, and others. Using the first four processes of word formation, the paper analyses some new lexical entries into political vocabulary especially in the language use of apex ethnic political leadership in Nigeria as found in purposively sampled print and online media reports and interrogates the underlying power struggles and ideological contestations in these new lexical derivations and formations through critical discourse analysis (CDA). Findings show that these neologisms foreground ethnic identity construction along lines of division and exclusionism with the potential threat to peaceful national dialogue in Nigeria. It is also obvious from the analysis that these new lexical formations are attempts at contesting and subverting the nepotism tendencies allegedly more pronounced among the present leaders. The paper concludes that instead of fanning these divisive propagandist neologisms, political actors and Nigerians as a whole should address fundamental issues of equality, equity, justice and fair play in governance in order to achieve lasting peace in a united de-ethnicized Nigeria as a way of stemming the tide of the proliferation of negative ethnic lexical production.