Coordination and Apposition in Energy Reports in Selected Nigerian Online Newspapers

This study investigated the syntactic uses of coordination and apposition in energy reports in selected Nigerian newspapers published online. Fifteen energy reports were purposively selected from three Nigerian online newspapers – The Guardian, The Punch and Vanguard. The data analysis was guided by Hengeveld and Mackenzie’s Functional Discourse Grammar. The results showed that coordination was a crucial process in combining grammatical structures as applied to virtually every element of the sentences. The results also showed that coordination helped to give comprehensive details that were difficult to capture with a single lexical item and enhanced the level of details in syntactic situations in groups involvement. Where the coordination and was dominant, it was mainly used for the semantic purpose of addition. Furthermore, the findings showed that apposition was a useful grammatical element which catered for details such as names, positions and designated departments of officials and agencies mentioned in energy reports. It is therefore concluded that coordination and apposition are useful grammatical elements which can aid not just the cohesion of scientific reports but also improve their comprehensiveness and comprehensibility.