Abstract
This study was aimed at investigating the communicative implications of Nigerian
English usage. It explored, extensively, the peculiarities of this variety. The
study employed normative research approach where in addition to the
researchers’ participant discussions with various categories of Nigerian users of
English, made an extensive impressionistic study of copious literature. Four
research questions guided the study with a view to discovering the degree to
which Nigerian English is a variant or a deviation. The inherent peculiarities
discovered were sorted and classified according to the lexical, syntactic,
phonological, semantic and slang variations. The result, therefore, revealed that
with the degree of the deviations in all the linguistic levels, the majority of
Nigerian English expressions constitute serious problems such that it requires
further intensive analytical, linguistic investigation with a view to distinguishing
standard from non standard forms. Based on
This study was aimed at investigating the communicative implications of Nigerian
English usage. It explored, extensively, the peculiarities of this variety. The
study employed normative research approach where in addition to the
researchers’ participant discussions with various categories of Nigerian users of
English, made an extensive impressionistic study of copious literature. Four
research questions guided the study with a view to discovering the degree to
which Nigerian English is a variant or a deviation. The inherent peculiarities
discovered were sorted and classified according to the lexical, syntactic,
phonological, semantic and slang variations. The result, therefore, revealed that
with the degree of the deviations in all the linguistic levels, the majority of
Nigerian English expressions constitute serious problems such that it requires
further intensive analytical, linguistic investigation with a view to distinguishing
standard from non standard forms. Based on this, the researcher went on to
suggest that an in depth study be carried out on the features of the English of
these categories of users and the result juxtaposed with those of competent
users so as to establish a standard variety for the purposes of teaching and
learning.