Collocational Choice in the Discourse Activities of Select Paramilitary Agencies.pdf

This paper investigated the collocational choices used among three Nigerian paramilitary formations in their official discourse activities with a view to ascertaining the contextual meanings of the lexical combinations. Data for the study comprised of 114 collocated items collected by means of participant observation and key informant interview (KII) of randomly selected segments of the personnel while in office environments, patrol duties and muster parades. The findings showed that personnel of the formations used peculiar collocational choices in their formal discourse engagements which revealed a high level of competence that enhanced in-group mutual intelligibility and solidarity among members. Categorically, the collocational choices occurred in eight different combinations: noun-noun, adjective-noun, verb-noun, adverb-adjective, adverb?verb, adverb-noun, noun-adjective and verb-adverb made up of lexically compatible items to advance institutionally modelled meanings. The lexical collocations are prominently two content words in the open class system that showed linguistic appropriateness and stylistic felicities. They are formulated to communicate professional orientation to facilitate the discharge of the security and safety-related statutory duties of the agencies. Keywords: Collocational choices, Lexical collocations, Discourse activities, Paramilitary Agencies, Paramilitary language, Nigeria