Morphosyntatic analysis of whatsapp message among Prampram Senior High Students (SHS)

Abstract

The study examined morphosyntatic structure of WhatsApp chats in Prampram Senior High School with concentration on selected classes and students in the school. The research was conducted qualitatively through questionnaire, WhatsApp chats and students’ compositions from class workbooks. The data collected were screenshots of students’ WhatsApp chats and exercises which were analyzed textually and thematically. The study was basically anchored on the structure of WhatsApp language, comprising standard and non – standard forms of the official, academic language in Ghana, English Language. These words and sentence structures are made up of acronyms, abbreviations, spoken word language forms, inversion, pidgin and vernacular. It also found that, these words and sentence structures were transferred to academic work in the school, where in essay writing, these traits were exhibited. Casual and brief interviews with teachers and students showed they had been soul tremendous consciousness as not all features in the WhatsApp data reflected in the essay data.