Documenting World Englishes in the Oxford English Dictionary: Past Perspectives, Present Developments, and Future Directions

Salazar, Danica

doi:10.5040/9781350167087.ch-013

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Because of the great ethnic and linguistic diversity, English continues to play an indispensable role as a lingua franca in the country. In research on world Englishes, Nigerian English is considered a nativising variety of English that functions as a second language and is receiving increased recognition and codification (see Salazar, 2020Salazar, , 2021, on the recent update to the Oxford English dictionary (OED) that included numerous lexical innovations from Nigerian English). However, there is still a strong exonormative orientation towards British and American English in Nigerian society and the education system (Oyebola & Gut, 2020).…”

Section: Nigerian Pidgin English and The Social And Cultural Signific...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural conceptualisations in Nigerian Pidgin English proverbs

Callies

2024

World Englishes

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This article explores Nigerian Pidgin English proverbs as a source of cultural conceptualisations that reflect traditional wisdom as well as the modern urban setting of West Africa. A total of 173 proverbs sourced from the BBC News Pidgin's Instagram service were analysed for recurrent lexical keywords and themes (e.g. those relating to food, eating and drinking, and animals) that can be interpreted as source domain lexical material that points to the knowledge of nature, common animals, objects and social situations. The findings suggest that Nigerian Pidgin English proverbs contain a rich inventory of variety‐ and culture‐specific lexis that encodes cultural knowledge and practice, for example knowledge of the local flora and fauna, food items, but also objects of material culture such as clothing, as well as references to social culture.

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Section: Nigerian Pidgin English and The Social And Cultural Signific...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural conceptualisations in Nigerian Pidgin English proverbs

Callies

2024

World Englishes

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“…This is also due to the fact that publications in postcolonial nations continue to be edited following British or American standards, so that lexical innovations in speech may not always make it into published writing (Salazar 2014). For this reason, OED editors are increasingly turning to less mediated forms of writing, such as social media posts and song lyrics, in order to find quotations that more closely approximate the way that speakers of World English talk, and therefore serve as more authentic illustrations of how World English words are used in real-life contexts (Salazar 2021).…”

Section: Selecting Words For Inclusion and Editing Entriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

African Englishes in the <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i>

Salazar

2023

LEXI

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In some of its recent quarterly updates, the Oxford English Dictionary has published particularly large batches of new and revised entries from South African English, Nigerian English, and East African English. The present article is a detailed discussion of the editorial work behind these updates for African varieties of English, whose distinctive vocabularies the OED is currently taking steps to cover more widely. The paper explains how words are selected for inclusion, how new entries are researched and written, how new sources of textual evidence such as social media give OED editors greater insight into African Englishes, and how the dictionary's African consultants and users contribute to ensuring the accuracy and authenticity of the OED's definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, and quotation evidence. The article also highlights a selection of African words and phrases that have recently been added to or revised in the OED, all of which show the many different forms of lexical innovation that shape the distinctive vocabularies of African Englishes. Keywords: Oxford English Dictionary, historical lexicography, African Englishes, East African English, South African English, West African English, Nigerian English

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Pidgin English proverbs as a source of structural nativization in Nigerian English

Callies,

Oyebola

2024

World Englishes

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In this paper, we explore the role of Nigerian Pidgin English (NPE) proverbs in language contact settings and their impact on the development of idiomatic phraseology in Nigerian English (NgE). In a set of 100 NPE proverbs, we identified lexical keywords that served as anchors for searches in the large‐scale Nairaland corpus to detect recurrent collocational patterns that in further proximity searches yielded frequent, lexico‐grammatically variable patterns that may be interpreted as innovations at the early stages of idiom formation. The findings suggest that cognitively motivated key lexical items of NPE proverbs may serve as a basis for the formation of variable but also lexico‐grammatically more condensed idiomatic expressions in NgE.

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Documenting World Englishes in the Oxford English Dictionary: Past Perspectives, Present Developments, and Future Directions

Cited by 3 publications

References 11 publications

Cultural conceptualisations in Nigerian Pidgin English proverbs

Cultural conceptualisations in Nigerian Pidgin English proverbs

African Englishes in the <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i>

Pidgin English proverbs as a source of structural nativization in Nigerian English

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