The most striking change in status is its prominent use in tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Research has shown that Nigerian Pidgin is now the language with the highest population of users, and also a first language in some minority groups in Nigeria ( Igboanusi, 2008). Over the years, Nigerian Pidgin has gradually gained in importance because educated Nigerians also use it in communication. It is accorded a low prestige in Nigeria because it is not officially recognized and was mostly used by speakers who could not acquire formal education.

Nigerian Pidgin, on the other hand, is an English-based contact language that developed as a result of European contact with West African languages. The data for the present work is a variety of Nigerian English as spoken by educated speakers.

There is no description of an acceptable standard Nigerian English available but scholars agree that Nigerian English is a “recognizable and highly distinctive variety of English” ( Gut, 2008: 40). English in contact with the other numerous languages that exist in Nigeria has given rise to what is called Nigerian English, which is usually regarded as a cluster of different sub-varieties ( Jibril, 1986 Jowitt, 1991 see Gut, 2008 for an overview and discussion). These two languages have existed together for a long time in Nigeria and traditionally have been serving different purposes.Įnglish is the official language and serves prestigious functions as the language of the government, education, media, etc. Both languages serve as lingua franca (Nigerian Pidgin not officially recognized) amidst over hundreds of other Nigerian languages spoken in Nigeria. In Nigeria, English co-exists with an English-based pidgin, Nigerian Pidgin. A qualitative investigation reveals this complex situation as a continuum of style, with code-switching as one of the stylistic devices, motivated by such social factors as formality, setting, participants and interpersonal relationships. Particular clusters of speakers use particular constellations of variants. Implicational scaling, network analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis reveal that the use of variants is not randomly distributed over speakers. This paper investigates 67 conversations in Nigerian English by educated speakers as they occur in the International Corpus of English, Nigeria ( ice-Nigeria, Wunder et al., 2010), using the variability in copula usage as a test bed. Many speakers, however, speak both languages, and both are in close contact with each other, which keeps the question of the nature of their relationship on the agenda. A qualitative investigation reveals this complex situation as a continuum of style, with code-switching as one of the stylistic devices, motivated by such social factors as formality, setting, participants and interpersonal relationships.ĭeuber (2006) investigated variation in spoken Nigerian Pidgin data by educated speakers and found no evidence for a continuum of lects between Nigerian Pidgin and English. This paper investigates 67 conversations in Nigerian English by educated speakers as they occur in the International Corpus of English, Nigeria ( ice-Nigeria, ), using the variability in copula usage as a test bed. ) investigated variation in spoken Nigerian Pidgin data by educated speakers and found no evidence for a continuum of lects between Nigerian Pidgin and English.

Academic sources on pidgin language