A Study of the Verbal Group in the Student Pidgin (SP) Of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church Mawuko Girls‟ SHS, Ho

Abstract

This research set out to study the Verbal Group in the Student Pidgin (SP) of a female Senior High School in Ho. SP is the type of Pidgin English, variously described as “educated,” “institutionalised” or “student” pidgin, and is believed to have started in a few prestigious boys‟ secondary schools in the late 1950s and 60s in the southern part of Ghana. It [SP] has since spread fast among secondary school students and graduates in the country, and has taken a firm foothold. Recent findings have found that women and girls are suddenly using the code that was initially the preserve of the young male elite. This thesis tests the use of SP among female Senior High School (SHS) students in EPC Mawuko Girls‟ Senior High School, Ho in the Volta Region by carrying out a syntactic study of the verbal group of the pidgin spoken by the female SHS students. Data for the research came from taped conversations on a variety of topics of interest to teenage female students. Nine (9) student girls aged between 15 and 25 in SHS 2 & 3 were taped for the purpose. In all, the study has proved that contrary to earlier positions that female SP speakers used the code only to be accepted in male company, female students have developed their own mechanisms and intricacies of the code. In this way, such syntactic structures as Tense, Mood & Aspect (TMA), Complementation of Verbs and Modality found in pidgins and creoles are present in the female SP. Though the literature available shows that the code began with male secondary school students only, it has now become a code for both genders. This research argues, therefore, that the SP of female speakers shares whatever meaning mechanisms and syntactic intricacies found in the adult male code.