PRAGMATIC FUNCTIONS OF IGBO-BASED ONITSHA SLANG: A STUDY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE INTERPRETATION

Abstract

What happens when artificial intelligence (AI) meets Igbo-based Onitsha slang? This study explores the pragmatic functions of Igbo-based Onitsha slang and how artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT interpret their meanings. Drawing on the relevance theory and the speech act theory as its theoretical frameworks, the study analyses the intention, the context and the implicature across human and machine understanding. A qualitative research design was adopted, and forty slang expressions were sourced from a public post on Facebook, which featured contemporary Onitsha slang. The analysis was presented in a tabular form to highlight the contextual interpretation, the pragmatic functions, AI-generated interpretations, the researcher’s interpretation, and points of convergence and divergence between human and AI understanding. Findings reveal that while AI systems can process literal meanings, they often lack the capacity to grasp deeper cultural and contextual nuances that are characteristic of human inference. This underscores the need for context-sensitive and culturally informed AI models. The study offers a new insight into the intersection of African sociolinguistics and emerging AI discourse by demonstrating how AI’s misinterpretation of Igbo-based Onitsha slang exposes the limitations of algorithms predominantly trained on Western linguistic data. It therefore foregrounds the urgency of developing AI systems aligned with African linguistic creativity and cultural expression.