Intonation and Attitude in Nigerian English

Abstract

Intonation is an important phenomenon in language believed to have strong effect on communication. It is often said in reference to the primacy of intonation meaning over lexical content that "It's not what you said, it's how you said it!". To this effect, a number of scholars have argued that intonation conveys different attitudes in English and is principally responsible for misunderstandings between native and non-native English speakers. This paper, therefore, attempts to ascertain the extent to which Nigerian speakers of English use English intonation tunes to express attitude as it is in Standard British English. Twenty-two subjects comprising television reporters using English for their professional assignments and confirmed to have been exposed to basic training in English intonation during their academic studies and/or in the course of their professional training were made to read five utterance items designed to test their knowledge of attitudinal function of intonation. The analysis shows that the respondents were deficient in the use of English intonation tunes to express attitude as they only scored 15.5% overall appropriate production of intonation tunes in the utterance items. It was concluded that the subjects demonstrated a restricted use of intonation in communication, as intonation was rarely used to express attitude. This confirms earlier claims that Nigerian English users make restricted use of the complex intonation tunes of English especially those tunes assigned to reflect the speaker's attitude to the listener or what is being said.

Analysis of Intonation Patterns of Selected Nigerian Bilingual Educated Speakers of English

“…It was observed that the use of tunes in Nigerian English was low; where the differences lie minimally in the utterances with falling pitch and appear significantly with the rising tone. Akinjobi and Oladipupo (2010) also looked at the place of intonation as not only being that which is said but how it is said, investigating the intonation and attitude in Nigerian English with the intention of ascertaining the extent to which Nigerian speakers of English use English intonation tunes to express attitudes. A level of deficiency in the use of intonation was recorded among the respondents.…”

Educated Nollywood artistes’ accent as a Normative Standard of English pronunciation in Nigeria

“…On the other hand are the proponents of an exonormative accent (e.g. Akinjobi, 2012aAkinjobi, , 2020Adesanya, 2020;Awonusi, 2020) who opine that retaining RP is the more viable option in view of the multiple English accents in Nigeria and the need to maintain intelligibility with other speakers of English around the world. They argue that, since RP is defined and codified, learning materials (e.g.…”

“…However, a few others are of the opinion that the exonormative Standard (RP) should be upheld in order to sustain intelligibility with other English speakers worldwide. But in the absence of native English models, an acrolectal variety that is close to RP or technology-driven, non-enculturation sources of speech practice should be adopted as a normative model (Akinjobi, 2012a;Awonusi, 2020).…”

“…However, a few others are of the opinion that the exonormative Standard (RP) should be upheld in order to sustain intelligibility with other English speakers worldwide. But in the absence of native English models, an acrolectal variety that is close to RP or technology-driven, non-enculturation sources of speech practice should be adopted as a normative model (Akinjobi, 2012a;Awonusi, 2020).Following the latter view, studies have been conducted to investigate the suitability of select speaker groups in Nigeria as ancillary models of Standard English pronunciation. These include teachers and teachers-in-training (…”

“…students of English (Akinjobi, 2012b); media practitioners such as newscasters, reporters, and television and radio presenters (Akinjobi & Oladipupo, 2005;Melefa, 2019); educated Nollywood Artistesactors and actresses in the Nigerian film industry - (Adeniyi, 2016) and Nigerian corporate advertisers (Sunday & Ayinde, 2020).…”