A Lexi-Semantic Analysis of Crime Investigation: The Case of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission

Abstract

The paper examines a semantic analysis of crime investigation using EFCC investigative report. The methodology is a content analysis and a descriptive approach to investigate the semantic components of language use of the EFCC. A sample was taken from the online site of the EFCC and analysis was carried out to explore the semantic features of the language use of the EFCC in their crime investigation, to analyze the types of meaning that is inherent in their investigation report, to identify the lexical items in their report and examine their semantic properties; and to examine the cohesive devices in the language of the investigative report of the EFCC. Findings revealed that under the element of sentential meaning, EFCC investigative reports make use of entailment; presupposition; ambiguity and semantic vagueness, while it is characterized by collocative, thematic and associative types of meaning. Under the cohesive devices, EFCC investigative reports make use of reference, substitution, ellipsis and lexical reiteration to effectively encode the desired meaning and achieve cohesion and coherence.

1.0 Introduction

Linguistics has been defined by Omachonu as “the scientific study of language” (7). The discipline called linguistics has various branches such as: Sociolinguistics, Anthropological linguistics, Phonetics and Phonology, Discourse Analysis, Applied linguistics, Pragmatics, Forensic linguistics, Stylistics, Semantics, etc. and linguistics as a discipline has tried to spread its tentacles to the various fields of human endeavour in order to examine the role of language in human activities with the aim of analyzing human interactions and communications. The later subfield, Semantics, is the branch of linguistics that examines meaning in communication. This study examines the semantics of crime investigations in selected security unit in Nigeria with a focus on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

1.1 Background of the Study

English has long been established as a universal and international language. Some countries use it as their lingua-franca, although such countries have their various local or ethnic languages. The adoption of English in Nigeria and other parts of the world as the official medium of communication has led to an increasing need for literatures that treat very salient areas of the language especially such areas that pose serious challenges to students and other users of the language, in this regard, the area of semantics or meaning. According to Omachonu (13) “Semantics is the area of linguistics that deals with the study of meaning; it examines the ways in which words and sentences of various grammatical constructions are used and understood by speakers of a given language. Semantics therefore, is the science of meaning”.