Linguistics Analysis Of Financial Corruption
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Linguistics Analysis Of Financial Corruption
Abstract
This study looks at the language used in newspaper reporting. Its main issue is the corruption scandal involving the Federal Ministry of Health’s unspent 300 million naira in 2007, which strongly accused former President Obasanjo’s daughter. Three daily newspapers were chosen: the Daily Sun, the Daily Trust, and the Leadership, all published between May 1st and May 31st, 2008.
Five reports are submitted to linguistic analysis at three levels: graphological, lexical, and syntactic, with each level’s semantic implications highlighted. It has been established that some journalists report objectively, removing themselves from the tales, while others incorporate personal biases and emotions into their reporting.
Finally, the report proposes that journalists consider their readers’ language capabilities when selecting words and structures for the various stories they write.
CHAPTER ONE: Introduction
Background for the Study
The recently issued Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 20181, which is intended to evaluate worldwide perceptions of public-sector corruption, sheds light on Nigeria’s struggle with its crooked reputation. Nigeria has moved up four places during 2017, to 144 out of 180 in the most recent CPI nation rankings.
However, when one studies Nigeria’s real CPI score, which has stayed largely stable over the previous decade, this apparent increase is rendered ineffective. While the CPI only measures corruption perception, which is susceptible to subjective bias and is fundamentally incapable of analysing each country’s accountability processes, it remains a helpful proxy for measuring corruption performance in specific countries.
Nigeria has maintained a CPI of approximately 27% since 2012. Because its score did not change between 2017 and 2018, Nigeria’s four-point increase only indicates that a few other countries scored worse than it in 2018. Senegal, another West African country, climbed nine points during the same time period and now has a 45% CPI score in the 2018 rankings.
Nigeria’s reputation for corruption, like its CPI score, has stayed steady. This is despite the fact that public-sector corruption and the need for necessary policy reforms have dominated public debate since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999.
Indeed, between 1999 and 2015, three consecutive governments/administrations made varying rhetorical and substantive (policy) claims of their commitment to fighting corruption, the most well-known of which was the Olusegun Obasanjo administration’s extensive use of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to implement a contentious anti-corruption agenda between 2003 and 2007.
But what really is corruption, and how does the Nigerian system define it? The Nigerian Constitution mentions corruption, emphasising the state’s responsibility to ‘abolish all corrupt practices and abuse of authority’.
2 However, it does not specify what constitutes corruption. As a result, law enforcement relies on a variety of legal provisions for prosecutorial proceedings, such as the Criminal Code Act, the Penal Code Act, the EFCC Act, and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission Act of 2000 (ICPC).
According to the latter, corruption encompasses bribery, fraud, and other associated acts.7 In general, the ICPC Act mentions corruption in regard to public officials and the offer, facilitation, or receipt of gratification, so corrupt practices are defined in terms of public officials and public services.
Within these boundaries, this study looks at the relationship between corruption, the media, and electoral processes. By focussing on media coverage of corruption and anticorruption, we investigated how upcoming general elections impact coverage of this societal issue.
We have questioned the value of politically biassed coverage and investigated its impact on public opinion and policy results, particularly in the months after elections.
Using consequence mapping, we compared corruption/anti-corruption media coverage to incoming political players’ anticorruption agendas as outlined in campaign promises or posturing, as well as post-election policy-making.
1.2 Statement of Problem
This research focusses on the language and style of newspaper reporting on the issue of corruption. It focusses on the presentation of a scam that occurred in the Federal Ministry of Health involving an unspent budgetary allocation of 300 million naira in 2007.
Journalists are educated to utilise language in unique ways that can benefit the overall development of a community, or they can rip the entire country apart if language is not properly managed.
It is a well-known truth that each sphere of human endeavour has unique linguistic characteristics that distinguish its language. Journalism is no exception. In this study, I tried to avoid using the term ‘journalese’ as a technical word of official register that denotes the idiosyncrasies and grammatical nuances of journalism practitioners.
This is merely because the 21st Century Chambers Dictionary (2006) defines ‘Journalese’ as “derogatory, the language is typically shallow and full of clichés and jargons, used by less able journalists.” As a result, this study will look at other language elements that distinguish journalistic style, thereby establishing journalists as genuine nation-builders.
It is an undeniable fact that language is a human characteristic that allows someone to communicate with people of similar or even opposing beliefs. When we, as scholars, study some of the components of this medium of human communication, we are said to be involved in linguistic research.
If linguistics can be easily defined as the scientific study of language, as we appear to have done above, the definition of style has not gained the same level of simplicity among literary and linguistic experts. However, our study is not concerned in the ostensibly scholarly debate about the generally accepted definition of the term’style.’
However, a large number of scholars (Enkvist 1964, Crystal and Davy 1969, Chatman 1971, Fowler 1971, and Fakuade 1998) now concur that the term style refers to how an author says or writes anything he wants to say or write.
This ‘how’ is only realised after a thorough inspection of the text. Similarly,’stylistics’ refers to the study of style. This study is the result of a systematic inspection or analysis of text, which aims to analyse how journalists use and deploy language when reporting on critical national and international issues.
Newspaper readers frequently complain about the terminology used in reports. These concerns primarily concern the employment of lexical words and the syntactic structure of certain sentences.
The problem with this study is that certain journalists frequently utilise clichés, jargon, and complex syntactic phrase patterns, which they believe define their writing style.
Journalism is a career undertaken by people with limited training in the field of information distribution. Reporters, particularly in the print media, select words that will convey specific meanings to their intended or target audience within a given subject framework.
1.3 Objectives Of The Research
The current study investigates the language analysis of financial corruption through a case study of selected publications. Specifically, the study investigates:
Nigerian journalists’ use of lexical elements in reporting corruption instances, as well as their presentation of material in terms of syntactic structure and linguistic style.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS.
The following research questions have been posed as a guide to the attainment of the above-stated objectives:
What linguistic implications do journalists’ word choices have when covering corruption stories?
What distinctive style can be discerned in the presentation of information in terms of grammatical structure and other stylistic elements of their stories?
1.5 Significance of the Study
This research is noteworthy in the following respects.
It will contribute to a better understanding of the ideologies that shape news reports, particularly in crisis situations, and will assist members of the public in re-evaluating their perceptions of insurgents based on media depictions.
It will also serve as a reference material for media practitioners and discourse analysts who wish to investigate further representations of corruption in the media.
It will contribute to the body of existing literature on media discourse and media representation, as well as motivate other scholars to conduct additional research on other aspects of media discourse in terms of representation/depiction.
It will help media practitioners, journalists, and media owners understand the importance of self-reflection in crisis management and news reporting, as well as taking efforts to remedy areas of negative media representation.
The study, however, poses a challenge to future scientists in that field of research who may wish to analyse the use of language in crisis situations. This work will serve the academic community and society as a whole by redefining remarks not only during political, legislative, judicial, congressional, or executive debates, but also throughout trial proceedings.
It will serve as a road map for media industry policymakers to re-evaluate the criteria employed in reporting the actions of the “out-group” in relation to the “in-group”.
1.6 Scope of the Study
This investigation centred on print media accounts of Its core issue is the corruption tale involving the unspent 300 million naira of the Federal Ministry of Health in 2007, which gravely indicted former President Obasanjo’s daughter.
1.7 Definition of Terms.
The operational definition of terms. Certain crucial terminology utilised in this study must be properly defined so that we may comprehend their significance to the investigation. The key terms are:
Critical Discourse Analysis: The function of language as a social practice in a specific discourse that examines linguistic patterns and clarifies the depiction of phenomena through language choices.
Corruption: Corruption is a sort of dishonesty or a criminal offence that is performed by a person or organisation that is entrusted with a position of authority, in order to achieve illegal benefits or abuse power for one’s private gain.
Media Depictions: The use of words to represent events in the print media through journalism, such as insurgent activities recorded in Nigerian print media.
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