An Analysis of the Syntactic Features of Jenifa's Diary English and Its Implications on the Standard English Usage of Nigerian Students

Abstract

Jenifa's Diary, a popular TV show which gained much attention, has no doubt influenced the language use of teeming fans across the country. English usage of the protagonist of the TV show -Jenifa is armed with horrendous grammar and poor expression and after watching the film show, viewers have been inspired to speak like Jenifa. It is for this reason that this study analyzed the syntactic features of English usage of Jenifa and its implications on the English usage of students. Seven selected series of Jenifa's Diary was observed with the aim of identifying the features of Jenifa's English usage, after which its implications on students' use of English were elicited. The features of Jenifa's English as revealed by findings include semantic misapplication, malapropism, deviant use of verbs, code-mixing, literary transfer and many more. Even though, the English usage of Jenifa is ungrammatical and unacceptable to the norms of Standard English, a large population of students is emulating such language use. Students are seen saying "how is you" in place of 'how are you', I is fine" in place of 'I am fine' "Yaun!" to mean "yes or yes?' "my friendship/friended" to mean 'my friend' "lifia" in place of "leave here" and many more.