Gaps and Absences in the English Expressions of Some Staff and Students in an English-As-A-Second Language University Setting

Abstract

The use of English in second-language settings has attracted much attention from scholars over the years with much focus on the challenges that L2 users face as they engage the language in different communicative events. This paper highlights a kind of English usage indicating specific gaps and absences in the English expressions used in a Nigerian University setting with the aim of identifying the mechanisms involved in the emergence of these gaps and the danger they portend for effective English usage in formal contexts. By means of the non-participant observation method, relevant samples were gathered from randomly-selected staff and students in different formal contexts at different times in a Nigerian University. These were subjected to qualitative and structural analysis, using Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar with a focus on the nominal group structure and the lexico-grammatical system as revised by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004). Findings revealed that nouns acting as the head in the nominal group structure are omitted in the samples gathered so that the addressee is left to make out meanings from the expressions. Although interlocutors may become used to what is intended to be communicated, to an extent, as a result of consistent usage of such patterns, the gap created due to the absence of content words, which are nouns, at points where they ought to occur in the nominal group structure leads to ungrammatical English usage. This kind of speech behaviour encourages carelessly-constructed English expressions and makes formal discourse less formal.