A conversation entails the exchange of thoughts, ideas, emotions and questions between two or more individuals for a purpose. Conversation in the 21st century may be physical or blended. Studies have investigated discourse in friendship, negotiations, classroom and literary texts for interpretations, but little attention has been paid to the health talk in the recent time in Nigeria despite its significance in the post-Covid era. Few available linguistic analyses concentrated on doctor-patient interaction with less attention to those who are healthy at the moment but may need precautions to remain hearty. The laxness in a linguistic study on health will continue to create a gulf between health and linguistic analysis. Linguists need to engage in health jargon for proper exposition and linguistic simplification. Therefore, this research aims to analyze conversational codes in selected Channels TV health talks in Nigeria. With the application of the conversational codes by Harvey Sacks. Qualitative analysis is employed to interpret conversational codes in the data selected for the study. Out of the different episodes on Channels TV daily, five episodes on hypertension, COVID-19, heart attack, diabetes and sickle cell disorder constitute the data. The study explores the theory of conversation analysis by Harvey Sacks. The approach investigates communication systems and how discourse is constructed toward achieving the ultimate goal of interaction among discussants with minute overlaps. The study qualitatively examines turn-taking, adjacency pair, sequence, repair, opening and closing. Insight from Sacks' approach reveals that turn-taking is frequently used in the episodes with varying percentages (35-40%). Turns are flexible, and they could be determined by the host or the guests depending on the background exposure of the host to health matters. The use of fillers varies from speaker to speaker with percentages. Socio-cultural roles affect turn construction management. The hosts often ask more questions than the guest, depending on the information the guest supplies, which determines follow-up questions. Theoretically, this study can support the theory of conversational analysis- of conversational codes. The study can be a reference for applied linguistics research insights to account for telephone calls, political interviews, classrooms and debates.

Nigerian English like a variety of world Englishes has received scholarly investigations at the segmental and suprasegmental levels. At the suprasegmental level, studies on the major varieties of Nigerian English have identified the characteristic nature of stress assignment and interactions, but little or no research has explored stress assignment on loanwords in Nigerian English. The study examines the stress placements on loanwords among educated Igbo and Yoruba speakers of English. A well-prepared text was read by sixty (60) educated Igbo and Yoruba speakers of English, and Daniel Jones’ 8th Edition Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary served as a baseline. The study uses Praat 6.0 to ascertain the degree of prominence of each syllable in the tokens among the respondents (dependent and control). The samples are analyzed using the metrical theory of stress for theoretical relevance (Liberman, 1975).[19] Findings revealed that the stress patterns of educated Igbo and Yoruba speakers of English in loanwords are 65% and 70% (respectively) closer to British English (hence, BrE). The study showed that educated Igbo and Yoruba speakers of English preferably stress the second syllable regardless of what is obtainable among the native speakers.

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Although scholarly attention has been drawn to the stress correlates of the sub-varieties of Educated Nigerian English (ENigE) without a conclusion on modes of determining stress patterns in the varieties, therefore, the current study provides insights into the stress correlates in the sub-variety. Two regional sub-varieties of ENigE, namely: Educated Yoruba English (EYE) and Educated Igbo English (EIE), are compared to describe the correlates of the stress of ENigE. Data were collected from twenty (20) university degree graduates (ten men and ten women). The participants have Igbo and Yoruba as their first languages (L1), satisfying Udofot’s 2004 classification for an educated variety of NigE. The participants read the prepared phrases and compounds to acoustic cues for stress placement in educated NigE. Acoustic signals such as pitch, intensity and duration are employed. The thresholds of significant difference are set at p<.05. This allows me to explore the interactions between YE, IE, and the control (British English). Findings show that pitch (F0) serves as the main cue for stress correlates in the sub-varieties. The results further reveal that 80% of the participants operated British English stress pattern in isolated words. It suggests that the cues for stress placement vary in the varieties by region and gender where English functions as a second language. However, duration and intensity as acoustic parameters are insufficient to predict stress correlates in the sub-varieties of the ENigE understudy. The study as well discovers fundamental frequencies as stress correlates in the sub-varieties.