The English of Nigerian newspapers

Abstract

A description of the ‘vigorous and variegated’ English-language press in Africa's largest anglophone country

General English

“…Any other codification or description has either to justify its validity before the throne, or reject the authority, of deficit linguistics. Explaining the title of his book, Nigerian English Usage, Jowitt (1991), for example, states:…”

“…For example, with reference to Ghana, Todd and Hancock (1986: 129) observe that "The quality of English has always been closely modelled on British norms and the speakers tend to pride themselves on the excellence of their English'. In Nigeria, Jowitt (1994), similarly, notes that:…”

“…It would be plausible, therefore, to see such forms as styles of speech or expression to which speakers of English as an international language will be exposed, and which will constitute their repertoire and not 'errors', as some purists will argue, or different national varieties of the language, as some liberals will argue. According to Jowitt (1994), 'the distinctiveness of Nigerian (Indian, Singaporean, etc.) English 'may be more stylistic than anything else...'.…”

A Study of the Relative Clause as a Modifier in Two Ghanaian Newspapers

“…Along with this comes, on one side, the responsibility of newspapers to ensure that the language used in this dialogue is standard and unambiguous; and on the other side, the expectation from intended readers that the quality of language use would be high in terms of grammaticality and felicity norms. However, this expectation is not always met especially in English-speaking countries of West Africa like Nigeria and Ghana, where English is the official language and the language of most of the major newspapers in the country, due in part to the inevitable language proficiency differentials among the contributors to the newspapers (Jowitt, 1994;Tingley 1981).…”

Ideology and body part metaphors in Nigerian English

“…Tunca, 2008;Teilanyo, 2009) or have subsumed them in larger frames in strictly language-based studies on NE (e.g. Jowitt, 1994;Onuigbo, 2007;Pérez, 2008). This gap points to the fact that the present study is a first attempt to examine metaphors (of body parts) in Nigerian English from the purview of embodiment, and establish the link between the metaphors and their ideological orientations.…”