The Register of Extortion on the Nigerian Highway

Abstract

This study examines, from a lexico-semantic perspective, the register of extortion on the Nigerian highways. The study, which employs participatory observation for data elicitation, is motivated by Nigeria‟s ranking by Transparency International as the second, sixth, and twenty-eighth most corrupt nation in the world in 2005, 2006 and 2008 respectively. Using the speech act theory as a basis, the study discovers that while politeness strategies are employed to extort money from private vehicle owners, vile expressions are used for extortion from commercial transporters. The study recommends that urgent steps be taken to sanitise public institutions in order to raise the nation‟s integrity