Article Citation: Ahmed Mohammed Bedu & Hauwa Giwa-Ali (2024). An Evaluation of Lexical Relations in Nigerian Online Media: A Case Study of Neptune Prime. DEGEL: The Journal of the Faculty of Arts and Islamic Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1. ISSN 0794-9316
AN EVALUATION OF LEXICAL
RELATIONS IN NIGERIAN ONLINE MEDIA: A CASE STUDY OF NEPTUNE PRIME
By
Ahmed
Mohammed Bedu & Hauwa Giwa-Ali
Abstract
As the emergence of online
media allows journalists to utilize a limited vocabulary in packaging detailed
information on their websites, the meaning properties of lexical words tend to
exhibit different relationships within news stories and opinion articles. This
paper evaluates the lexical sense relations in the Nigerian online
newspaper Neptune Prime to explain how journalists use a
single word to convey multiple meanings in their reportage. The research
generated its data from the archival page of the online newspaper to assess the
semantic behaviors of lexical items and their individual relations in various
contexts within news stories and opinion articles. The findings of the research
reveal that the semantic properties of lexical words and their relationships,
including polysemy, homonymy, homophony, antonymy, and others, enable online
media journalists to manipulate English words effectively. This manipulation
not only conveys clear information but also attracts the attention of their
audience, encouraging them to engage with the full content of the stories.
Keywords: Lexical
relations, structural semantics, online media, journalism, newspapers
Introduction
Scholars of media discourse
assert that mass communicators (media writers) across the globe use English
more than the owners of the language in educating and informing its
overwhelming populous audience. In this regard, media practitioners are using
the resource of the English language vocabularies to tailor information within
a short space and in journalistic parlance, this type of language use which is
peculiar to the journalism profession is known as ‘journalese’ (Galprine, 1977;
Bedu, 2017).
It is explained in many
literatures that mass media employ special use of language vocabularies to
compact gist of the news stories into few eye-snaring words to arouse readers’
curiosity to consume thewhole information in clear and simple manner (Bedu, 2014).
This involves unique utilization of lexical in organized syntactic
constructions to achieve brevity, clarity and attractiveness. In all the
syntactic constructions in the newspaper narratives, words tend to exhibit
their relationships of the meaning property to other words. The semantic
scholars dub such relationship as ‘lexical relations’ (Bolinger, 1968:11).
According to Lyons
(1977:57) meaning property is one of several features or components which
together can be said to make up the meanings of a word or utterance. There are
many kinds of lexical relations which can be distinguished by its use in any
text like newspaper stories or any context in discourse. There is particular
lexeme may be simultaneously in a number of lexical relations suchsynonymy,
antonymy, homonymy, polysemy, hyponymy, meronymy, metonymy, prototype and
collocation. And it may be more accurate to think of the lexicon as a network,
rather than a listing of words as in a published dictionary (Cruse, 1986).
In view of this, the
present paper intends to evaluate the lexical relations used in English
Nigerian online newspaper Neptune Primeas little or no attention
has been paid to ascertain the role and utilization of semantic field in news
writing that always allows journalists to maximumly single word to denote
several meaning senses in their reportage.
Literature Review
Lexicalization is a
stylistic variation of lexical choice that typically exhibits the power of
journalists as wordsmith in narrating information about events and actions in
the day-to-day activities of the people (Bedu, 2017). Media practitioners often
explain the meaning of words in terms of their relationship. In this regard,
journalist might simply use the word “conceal” in different stories but
denoting different relationship in another story as you can in example (1)
below:
i. He conceals the
facts and evidences ---it is same as ‘hide’, ‘obscure’, ‘cover’
‘given shallow information’ etc.,
In the example (1) above,
the word ‘conceal’ establishes different meaning properties that characterize
itself not in term of its component but in term of its relationship to other
word in form of synonymy in other structure.
As semantics is the study
of meaning in languages, it always attempts to focus on what the word
conventionally means, rather than on what a speaker or writer might want the
word to mean on particular occasion (Lyons, 1977; Yule 2006). Bolinger (1968)
and Yule (2006) state that relationship of the meaning of a word to other words
is what is referred as ‘lexical relationship’. Palmer (1976) along with other
scholars identify the following as types of lexical relationship:
SYNONYMY: Means the
“sameness of meanings”. The sets of words that have same meanings are called
the synonymy of one another (Palmer, 1975 p.88). “Synonyms is the term that
overlap in denotative meanings, connotative meanings or both. The best known of
these relations is synonymity in which terms have the same denotation.”e.g.
“car-auto” (Hermann, 1978).
There are two types of
synonymity:
1. Dimensional
synonymity (similarity): It involves denotative agreement that is not
sufficient for synonymity but that occur at adjacent points on a common
dimensional. E.g. laugh-smile.
2. Attributive
synonymity (similarity) The term in which salient attributes of one term
reasonable of another is called attributive similarity. E.g. rake-fork.
ANTONYMS: According
to Yule (2006), antonyms are words which are “opposite” in meanings. It is
useful to identify several different types of relationship under opposition.
“/” sign is used to indicate antonymy. As Good/bad, life/death, come/go,
dead/alive, pass/fail.
The term antonym is used
for “oppositeness of meaning” and words that are opposite are antonyms.
Antonymy is often thought of as the opposite of synonymy, but the status of the
two antonyms are very different (Palmer, 1975, p.94). For example. The words such
as wide/narrow, old/young, big/small, are antonyms.
Therefore, all words that
their semantic relations and meanings signify contrast, oppose or contradicts
the other words in term of meaning representation are called antonyms
(Bolinger& Sears, 1981; Cruse; 1976; Lyons, 1968). Semantic scholars
identify four types of antonyms which are as follows:
1. Contradictory
antonyms: These are terms opposed dichotomously e.g. alive-dead.
2. Contrary
antonyms: These terms are opposed symmetrically on a continuous dimension.
E.g. hot-cold.
3. Directional
antonyms: These are concepts opposed in time or space. E.g. before-after,
above-below.
4. Reverse
antonyms: Reverse antonyms, sometimes are called converses, represent
opposed actions. E.g. buy-sell.
Other form oppositiontypes
of relations that semanticists regarded themas antonymous include the
following:
1. Asymmetric
antonyms: It is opposed on a continuous dimension but the term indicates
asymmetrically i.e. imperfect symmetry. E.g. hot-cool. The imperfect symmetries
is the reason the relationship is not generally regarded as antonymic (Katz,
1972).
2. Incompatible
antonyms: It is a term in which denotative meaning of one term is opposed to
only part of the denotative meaning of the other term. E.g. “frank” is
incompatible with hypocritical in that hierocracy involves dishonesty, whereas,
frankness involves both honest and outspoken involves. Because the opposition
does not involve the full denotative meanings of these terms, they are not
antonyms.
3. Pseudo
Antonyms: These are so called pseudo antonyms because they opposition is
based on a connotative meaning of one term. E.g. “popular” and “shy” are
opposed because popularity connotes extroversion, which is denotatively opposed
to shyness (Hermann, 1979).
4. Simple
antonyms: The relationship between the words in which the negative of one
implies the positive of the other is called simple antonyms. The pairs are also
sometimes called complementary pairs or binary pairs. As Dead/alive (e.g. human
beings), pass/fail (e.g. exams); hit/miss (e.g. a target).
5. Gradable
antonyms: The relationship between opposites is that the positive of one
term does not necessarily imply the negative of the other. As Rich/poor (e.g.
status), fast/slow (e.g. speed), young/old (e.g. age), beautiful/ugly (e.g.
complexion). This relation is associated with adjectives and it has two major
features which are as follows:
HOMONYMY: Are
un-related senses of same phonological word. Homophones and homographs come
under homonyms (Yule, 1996). As Bear (to carry) and bear (animal), tale and
tail, etc. the term homonymy adds two further categories in it which are
homophones and homograph. These terms show some sort of sameness in words.
According to F. R. Palmer, homonymy is that there are several words with the
same shape and important thing is that they are different meanings of same word
as in the case of flight that can be trip, plane, delivery, etc.
George Yule distinguishes
different types of homonyms depending on their syntactic behavior and spelling
such as:
1. Lexemes
of the same syntactic category, and with the same spelling: e.g. lap “circuit
of house” and lap “part of body when sitting down”
2. Of the
same category, but with different spelling: e.g. the verb ring and wring;
3. Of
different categories, but with the same spelling: e.g. the verb keep and the
noun keep;
4. Of
different categories, and with different spelling: e.g. not, knot.
HOMOPHONES: Homophones
are the senses of the same “spoken words”. E.g. site and sight right and write,
etc.
HOMOGRAPHS: Homographs
are senses of same written word. E.g. lap “circuit of a course” and lap “part
of body when sitting down”. There are some complications in the fact that we do
not make the same distinction in writing and speech. There are some words such
as lead (metal) and lead (dog’s lead) are spelt in the same way but pronounced
differently. They come under homograph. And the same time, there are some words
such as site and sight, rite and right are spelt differently but pronounced in
the same way. Another form of homographs is ‘capitonym which is a word that
changes meaning when its first letter is capitalized as in Turkey (country) and
turkey (bird).
They come under homophony.
(F. R. Palmer, p.101). There are some homonyms and homophones that are also
very nearly antonyms. E.g. cleave (part asunder) and cleave (unite), raise and
raze. (F. R. Palmer, p.102). There are some variations in pronunciation and it
means that all the speakers do not have the same set of homonyms. For example,
English speaker pronounce the pairs click and clique, talk and torque in the
same way. (George Yule, p.64).
POLYSEMY: This term
refers that not only different word have different meanings but it is also the
case that same word may have a set of different meanings. This is called
polysemy and such a word is called polysemic. (F.R. Palmer, p.100). ForExamples
the word “flight” which dictionary defines it in many ways such as passing
through the air, power of flying, air journey, unit of the air force, volley,
digression, series of steps, etc.
“The term polysemy refers
to multiple senses of the same phonological word. It is the word with two or
more meanings”. (George Yule, p.64) For instance, the word ‘foot’ exhibits kind
of polysemous representation as illustrated below:
2. He hurt his foot
3. She stood at the foot of
the stairs.
A practical problem, in
this regard, is that if one form has several meanings, it is not always clear
as it happened in polysemy in which a word has several meanings. E.g. in
dictionary the word “flight” is a single polysemic word but it recognizes no less
than for words for mail such as armour, post, halfpenny, payment and spot. And
important thing is that they are not shown as different meanings of the same
word. And polysemic item is treated as a single entry (Palmer, 1975 p.101).
From the literature review,
one can understand that English language is endowed with various kinds of
lexical relations that journalists explore for expressing their intended
communication and informative content in their story. It is fact therefore that
the semantic properties of the lexical words are helping journalists to
effective use words that attract not only the attention of their audience but
simplifying the proposition of the information provided in their news stories
effectively. The specific features of the vocabulary entries equally help to
achieve unique characteristic of brevity, attractiveness and clarity in the
news stories. Therefore, the paper sets to interrogate these sematic relations
in news story of the online news medium the Neptune Prime in the data analysis
section.
Theoretical Framework
The present research
adopts structural semantics that is
emphasizing the importance of relations of both syntagmatic and paradigmatic
relationship between different lexical words especially their meaning/sense
(Lyons, 1977). The structural semantic framework views meaning as composed of
smaller structural units that are defined through social interactions, and may
become meaningless without such context. The framework of structural semantics
focuses on the meaning system that underlies language and allow for the
organization and understanding of word sense(s) (Bedu 2017). Under the
framework, the relationship between terms within a sentence is a top priority
since all thought must be present in the vocabulary and syntax of the languages
so that meaning of an idea can be accurately expressed (Fillmore, 1982).
The Data
The paper adopts bird-view
approach to x-ray the extent of semantic relations among the various lexical to
justify how the news writers or writers of the opinion articles are rendering
the communicative intentions to the readers through qualitative explanations of
the data.
Data Analysis
As lexical sense relations
are not only universal but evident across all forms of discourse genres, the
usage of English lexical various stories and opinion articles in Neptune Prime
online newspaper exhibit several forms of sense relations in the news narratives
of the mass media outlet as you can see below:
4. The
senate member utilizes the debate to polish the idea of
his colleague’s motion
5. Polish investors
are willing to invest in Nigeria’s power sectors…
The word Polish in the two
stories as exemplified above is a typical case of homograph and homophone since
the two words have the same spelling and pronunciation but different meanings
due to capitalization of the first letter in the structure (2) that indicates
Polish as person or people whose nationality is Poland while the polish in (1)
serves as the verb to mean reshape or refine the idea of his colleague motion.
In this regard, it is typical case of capitonym in lexical
sense relation.
Furthermore, there are
substantial usage of various forms of antonyms in the different news and
opinion articles in expressing the nature of various issues and events by the
news outlet. Consider the following excerpt:
6. In recent
years, countries in the Sahelian region experience hot weather
in the day time due to the effect of global warming and climate change unlike
the past ten years in which people in the region enjoyed much more warm weather
and cold one in the night
In the excerpt in (3)
above, the opinion article writer uses gradable antonym to describe the weather
in the Sahelian region. Gradable antonym is a sense relation in which pair of
words with opposite meanings exhibit relations where meanings lie on continuous
spectrum as in the case of hot, warm and cold in
the article.
Another form of antonym
that the research discover in the data is the reverse antonyms which some
scholars called as converses to represent opposed actions. Consider the
following excerpt in (4) below:
7. Government
must punish those ignite crisis in Plateau State and equally
reward patriotic elders in the various communities that are working round the
clock to dowse tension in their respective communities
The words ignite and dowse in
the above excerpt in (4) are in reverse antonyms as their sense relations tie
to change the cause of action in the Plateau State against crisis.
On the usage of synonymy
that means the “sameness of meanings, the data show that the online media
outlet utilizes such form of lexical sense relations to enrich their both news
stories and opinion articles to avoid monotonous use of words in its narratives.
Below are the some of the available examples in the data:
8. Federal
Government plan to cut its budget for 2025 to service foreign
debt
9. Economic
analysts insist that cutting the nation financial plan will
worsen inflation in the county.
10. Present
Tinubu is to present 2025 appropriation bill before the joint
session of the National Assembly.
11. Senators
are to scrutinize government’s expenditure plan
In the excerpts (5-8), the
boldface words that include budget, financial plan, appropriation
bill and expenditure plan as references are
semantically denoting one and only referent ‘budget’ even though some of the
lexical items in the stories are morphologically compound words. In this case,
the relations that exist among these lexical words are synonymous relationship
as the individual words mean precisely or nearly the same as another word in
the context of the news stories.
Still on the synonymy, the
propositions of numerous headlines of Neptune Prime newspaper
are usually crafted with monosyllabic verbs and nouns that are used as
substitutes for longer, more colloquial expressions. Many of the words that are
probably rarely found outside the main text of the stories.
The following is a list of
common headline vocabularies that synonyms in nature that the data exhibit as
illustrated in table (1) below:
Table 1. Common
headline vocabularies that synonyms in nature
|
Headline Word |
Meaning |
Example |
|
Alert |
alarm,
warning |
Flood alert in
East coast |
|
Ban |
Prohibition |
Government bans street
hawking |
|
Cut |
reduce,
reduction |
Britain cuts oversea
aid |
|
Deal |
agreement,
bargain |
Teachers
reject new pay deal |
|
Hail |
welcome,
praise |
PM hails peace
plan |
|
Face |
Be threatened
by |
Hospitals face more
cuts |
|
Jail |
Imprisonment |
Court jailed activists
for peace march |
On polysemous words, the
data in the online paper exhibit quality of polysemy relations where word has
more than on related meaning as you can see below:
12. The judicial arm
of government must be independent and autonomous, if we want credible democracy
in Nigeria….
13. Governor
Buni urged the local government chairmen to ensure judicial utilization
of all funds given to them………
14. The
recent flood displaced many communities along Hadejia-Kumadugu river bank in
Bade and Bursari Local Government Areas in Yobe State.
15. The
cashless policy forced people to withdraw all their savings from the banks
The two underlined
words judicial in the excerpt (9-10) are not only different
based on their grammatical class but they are semantically different as the
judicial in (9) is related to noun judiciary while in structure (10), it is an
adjective that is emphasizing ‘good/adequate use’ of the funds. On one hand,
the underlined words bank in (11-12) are all nouns based on
their grammatical class but their referents differ as the one in (11) denotes
place which is at the edge of the riverside while the one in (12) denotes
financial institutions.
However, there are some
complex semantic behaviours of some words in the Neptune Prime news stories
that based on structural semantics are not polysemous rather they are
metaphorical extension of meaning. Consider the following structures in online
newspaper:
16. Troops arrest man
in Yobe for smuggling government distributed farm machinery
17. Vice
President Kashim assured that government is working tirelessly to arrest the
situation
The word arrest in
(13) denotatively means apprehension and the one in (14) connotatively means
control.
Conclusion
From the discussion above
in the data analysis, it is evident that journalists utilize the rich semantic
properties of lexical words and their relationships, including polysemy,
homonymy, homophony, antonymy, and others, not only to convey clear information
but also to capture the attention of the audience. This is because the primary
function of language is social interaction, and the social impact of language
is a key concern for journalists and the journalism profession as a whole.
Consequently, the authors of news stories and opinion articles in Neptune
Prime make strategic use of a variety of words, leveraging both their
denotations and connotations, to avoid ambiguity and any form of linguistic
distortion of reality. In summary, this paper argues that the concept of
lexical semantics is not merely about denoting a proposition; rather, it refers
to the relationship between lexical words, which may have different meaningful
referents based on structural semantic principles. This approach helps achieve
brevity, attractiveness, and clarity in news stories and opinion articles.
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