Nigerian English and National Identity

Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. SOAS Linguistics Webinars
Summer 2020
August 11 Kingsley Ugwuanyi (Northumbria University) Abstract: It has been argued, especially in the non-inner circles (NICs) of English, that the extent to which speakers of English consider English as a ‘harbinger’ of their national identity might determine how they position as ‘owners’ of that language. Although findings suggest a widespread awareness as well as acceptance of endonormative varieties of English in NICs, it has yet to be widely debated whether perceptions of English as expressive of national identity in NICs might allow for its possible consideration as a ‘national language’. In this talk, I will present findings from a larger study of perceptions of Nigerian English to demonstrate how speakers of English in Nigeria enact a sense of national identity in their perceptions of English language (ownership).