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

Analysis of the phonemic realisation of educated Nollywood artistes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2022

Rotimi Oladipupo Open the ORCID record for Rotimi Oladipupo [Opens in a new window]  and
Elizabeth Akinfenwa
Rotimi Oladipupo*
Affiliation:
Department of English, Redeemer's University, Nigeria
Elizabeth Akinfenwa
Affiliation:
Department of English, Redeemer's University, Nigeria
*
Email: olarotimi2002@yahoo.com
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Extract

The English language, although a second language, plays a prominent role in Nigeria. As the official language in the media, governmental administration, education, law courts, commerce, entertainment and politics, it has assumed a hegemonic position over indigenous Nigerian languages (Oladipupo, 2021). In view of its long years of interaction with these languages, the absence of native models, and the influence of Nigerian teachers who lack Standard English pronunciation competence (Awonusi, 2015; Akinjobi, 2020), it has been nativised and acculturated (Adegbija, 2004). This has, therefore, resulted in a Nigerian English (NigE) variety that is markedly different from Standard British English, its precursor and target model, at the syntactic (e.g., Akinlotan, 2021), pragmatic (e.g., Fuchs, Gut & Soneye, 2013) and phonological (e.g., Awonusi, 2015; Akinola & Oladipupo, 2021) levels.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 39 , Issue 3: Special Feature: Chinese English - What's in a name? , September 2023 , pp. 207 - 217
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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