‘Mehn! This wins the award’

Abstract

Nigerian English (NigE) is a second language (L2) variety of English which has been domesticated, acculturated, and indigenised (Taiwo, 2009: 7; Jowitt, 2019: 26), due to its co-existence with about five hundred indigenous Nigerian languages (see Eberhard, Simons & Fennig, 2019). It is the language of education, governance, law, the media, and formal financial transactions in Nigeria. Based on Schneider's (2003: 271) Dynamic Model of the evolution of the New Englishes, NigE can be located at the late stage of nativisation, while recent studies show that it is on the verge of entering endonormative stabilisation (Gut, 2012: 3; Unuabonah & Gut, 2018: 210). Although NigE is an L2, there is a growing number of young people who speak it as a first language (L1; see Jowitt, 2019: 16; Onabamiro & Oladipupo, 2019). NigE includes sub-varieties which are classified based on different factors such as region/ethnicity, and educational attainment (Banjo, 1971; Jibril, 1986; Udofot, 2003). Although Udofot (2003: 204) suggests that the sub-variety used by Nigerians who have been educated in tertiary institutions should be taken as the standard variety, Jowitt (1991: 47) opines ‘that the usage of every Nigerian user is a mixture of Standard forms’ and non-standard forms. The data used in this paper are a mix of both standard and non-standard forms.

‘I am very emo’

“…Some English or anglicised expressions also function as discourse-pragmatic markers collocating with new functions in different contexts. For instance, ‘aunty’ in Malaysia (Lee & Shanmuganathan, 2020), ‘now’ and ‘mehn’ in Nigeria (Oladipupo & Unuabonah, 2020; Unuabonah, 2022). Having said all of the above, neologisms, specially produced in the web world, exhibit particular linguistic features and functions, making up a mixed language modality that combines various elements of communication practices embodied in conversation or writing (Baym, 2010).…”