Comparative Study of the Application of English Stress in Selected Radio News Broadcasts of Public-owned and Private-owned Radio Stations in Osun State

Abstract

Radio broadcasters are conscious speakers of language and it has been observed that a good number of them have received training on speech articulation in the course of the job. Phonological researches have continued to probe into a comprehensive characterisation of Nigerian English in relation to geo-ethnic, education and socio linguistic construct among other criteria but studies on stress placement of news broadcasters from Radio Stations in Radio news broadcast in south-west Nigeria have been scanty in the literature. This study investigated the appropriate realisation of sentence stress by the selected news broadcast selected radio stations in Osun State, Nigeria. Fifteen (15) sentences were analysed from the radio stations with the use of a speech software recorder. The sentences were analysed statistically and acoustically. The acoustic analysis was done using a computerized speech laboratory (PRAAT). The findings revealed that in the Public Radio news broadcaster placed stress appropriately on content words at 60.7% and Private Radio news broadcast (88.6%) with the Chi-square test result of (df-1, (3.84) p= 1.11E-01< 0.05). However, in the realisation of function words, thesampled broadcasters had (37.6%) and the private news broadcast had (96.1%) with the Chi-square result of (df-1, (3.84) p= 1.91E-03< 0.05. Results showed that the selected newscasters have a good knowledge of the application of nuclear stress. the T-test revealed that there is a slight difference between the performance of the newscasters and Standard British English (SBE), given that the newscasters performed well beyond average.