A Lexico-Semantic Analysis of Selected Songs of Wizkid

This work, a lexico-semantic analysis of selected songs of Wizkid, examined the lexical choices and methods of their employment in the data to communicate meaning and accentuate style. Scholars have devoted efforts to the study of words and their deployment in several contexts to achieve certain aims. In continuation with the existing scholarship, this research explored the manner of words deployment as well as the meaning(s) generated from such usage in the data under study. Data for this study comprised four songs of Wizkid: “Ojuelegba”, “Show You the Money”, “Omalicha” and “Come Closer” purposively selected owing to the subtlety of the lexical items employed in the data. M. A. K. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, a theory suitable for the exploration of the function of language as used in a certain context, as well as Alan Cruse’s (2000) approach to the study of lexical semantics which stipulates that words play a significant role in the interpretation of meaning of utterances and provide credence for the nuances and refinement that accompany language use, served as the theoretical foundation for this study. The paper discovered that through the employment of rhyming lexical items, familiar collocations, code mixing, invented clipped spellings, rhetorical questions, hyperbolic, repetitive and synecdochic words, morphological cataphora, the principle of oppositeness, theme-rheme relationship, pronoun topicalisation and the like, the artist has created a distinct style. The paper concluded that these lexical choices together form a formula which offers him the line of least resistance in communicating with the majority of Nigerians and the world at large.

Keywords: Wizkid Lexical Semantics Lexical Choices Meaning and Context

Authors

• Vero-Ekpris Urujzian
  Department of English, Akwa Ibom State University, Nigeria
• Jackson Archibong Etuk
  Department of English, Akwa Ibom State University, Nigeria