A STUDY OF MODIFICATION IN PRESIDENT NANA AKUFU-ADDO’S 7TH STATE OF THE NATION ADDRESS

Abstract

This paper examined the use of qualifiers as elements of modification in President Nana Akufo-Addo’s 7th State of the Nation’s Address. It is a qualitative research which employed content analysis to identify patterns and meanings within the text and draws inferences on the communication and context in which they were produced. Through the purposive sampling technique, one hundred (100) sentences were selected and analysed using Mudhsh et al’s (2015) Immediate Constituent Analysis (ICA). This theory provides a paradigm which breaks a sentence down into its constituent parts to help understand its underlying structure and meaning. The finding revealed that there is the preponderance usage of qualifiers in his modification of the nominal group structures than modifiers. Again, most of the qualifying elements in the address are made up of phrases and clauses; hardly were there single words used as qualifiers. It also established that qualifiers are significant in establishing and clarifying meaning in sentence structures and speeches. This underscored the fact that the use of qualifiers in modifying utterances makes information more vivid, more effective and ultimately more receptive to the reader/audience.