A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF FEATURES OF NIGERIAN ENGLISH IN THE SUBTITLES OF SELECTED NIGERIAN HOME VIDEOS

CHAPTER ONE

1.0       INTRODUCTION

One of the countries of the world where English language has become part of individuals‟ life after leaving the shores of England is Nigeria. According to history, the English language originated from the languages of the Germanic peoples (the Angles, Saxons, Frisii and Jutes) who migrated to Britain and later formed England. Subsequently, the language began to move from England to different countries of the world through exploration, trade, missionary activities and colonisation. As there had been languages in use in those places before the arrival of English, the contact of English language with the indigenous languages spoken in the countries, within a considerable time, brought about forms of English slightly different from the variety of English spoken in England. This eventually gave rise to other world varieties of English such as American English, Canadian English, Australian English, Indian English, South African English and of course Nigerian English.

Apart from the factors of time and space as mentioned above, the slight difference between Nigerian English and other world Englishes is not unconnected to the fact that the general linguistic forms of the language have been expanded by its Nigerian users.  Thus, pragmatics as an aspect of linguistics which studies language from the point of view of users provides an avenue to study English language in relation to the choices Nigerian users of the language encounter while using the language in social interaction and more importantly, the effects of their use of the language on international users of

English.

1.1        Background to the Study

English language is no more alien to Nigeria. This is because it has been able to adapt with the culture of the people and thereby nativised and domesticated to suit their beliefs, customs and aspirations. As a result, the Nigerian English can be identified anywhere on the globe based on the distinct features associated to it as a form of English that has been domesticated in the Nigerian society. The features can be noticed in the aspects of phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, lexico-semantics and pragmatics.

From a pragmatic standpoint, Nigerian English has in it usage of several words which have been given meanings beyond the meanings they have in their general world (Standard British English) usage. Many lexical items have been given special meanings by Nigerian users of English (Bamgbose 1971). Hence, the context in which many English words are used in Nigerian English has been expanded beyond their original status in the native English society. In addition, the cultural practices of the Nigerian environment have modified the rules of language use typical of English in native situation (ibid.). That is why it is assumed that many words that are used and a great deal of utterances in Nigerian English are Nigerian context based. This is connected to the observation that within the Nigerian society, users of English make utterances their listeners understand as the interractants have „communal lexicon‟ (Clark 1998 cited in

Clark 2009) which may be difficult to decode by a speaker of English who is alien to the Nigerian society except he is informed.

At this point, it can be mentioned that such utterances in relation to Nigerian sociocultural context are embedded in the subtitles of many Nigerian home videos. Without mincing words, the Nigerian home videos are not only playing important roles locally ranging from entertainment to preservation of Nigerian cultures, they are also being patronised by viewers across the globe and thereby transporting Nigerian cultures to the outside world. This therefore underscores the importance of context as a prerequisite for international speakers of English to understand intelligibly the Nigerian English usage as it is usually presented in the Nigerian home video subtitles. 

The subtitles are not the actual utterances of characters since the characters use Nigerian languages. On the contrary, they are translation work of producers of the videos whose primary aim should be to get a wider audience. Consequently, for pragmatic relevance and interest of this research, sentences in these subtitles have to be referred to as

“utterances” and at the same time attributed to the home video producers in whose language (English) ideas in the videos storylines are being projected to the viewers.