Schedule StuTS 65

There is a need to investigate which variety of English is most likely to act as a marker of linguistic identity in Nigeria. It is not always clear whether Nigerians are able to differentiate successfully between dialectal varieties of English (Olaniyi & Josiah, 2013). Also, there is a lack of empirical study on their perceptions and attitudes towards English accents. This study investigates the attitudes of Nigerians towards accents of English both from the inner circle and the non-inner circle. It examines the attitudes of Nigerian University students to the available English accents in the country, namely; British English, American English, Ghanaian English, Jamaican English and Nigerian English. This study employs a range of direct (interviews and questionnaire) and indirect (the verbal-guise test) techniques of attitude measurement to obtain in-depth information about such perceptions. Using SPSS (IBM Corp. 2017), the data from the accent rating test was analyzed by conducting a multivariate analysis of variance for differences and significance in the rating between the speakers and traits. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was performed to determine how the various traits were grouped into significant sociolinguistic dimensions. To determine the differences in the scores for these dimensions with respect to the accents, a repeated analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed. The results show that Nigerians have varying preferences for English accents, depending on the territory of origin and/or use of the English varieties, in other words, whether those varieties of English come from the inner or the non-inner circle (Kachru 1982).

Attitudes towards accents of English in Nigeria
Folajimi Oyebola
University of Münster, Germany
oyebola@uni-muenster.de; +4917660465608

There is a need to investigate which variety of English is most likely to act as a marker of linguistic identity in Nigeria. It is not always clear whether Nigerians are able to differentiate successfully between dialectal varieties of English (Olaniyi & Josiah, 2013). Also, there is a lack of empirical study on their perceptions and attitudes towards English accents. This study investigates the attitudes of Nigerians towards accents of English both from the inner circle and the non-inner circle. It examines the attitudes of Nigerian University students to the available English accents in the country, namely; British English, American English, Ghanaian English, Jamaican English and Nigerian English. This study employs a range of direct (interviews and questionnaire) and indirect (the verbal-guise test) techniques of attitude measurement to obtain in-depth information about such perceptions. Using SPSS (IBM Corp. 2017), the data from the accent rating test was analyzed by conducting a multivariate analysis of variance for differences and significance in the rating between the speakers and traits. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was performed to determine how the various traits were grouped into significant sociolinguistic dimensions. To determine the differences in the scores for these dimensions with respect to the accents, a repeated analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed. The results show that Nigerians have varying preferences for English accents, depending on the territory of origin and/or use of the English varieties, in other words, whether those varieties of English come from the inner or the non-inner circle (Kachru 1982).
In my presentation, I will give an overview of the study, the methodological approach and the findings. It is expected that the research contribute to the exploration of the future development of English in Nigeria within the context of World Englishes (Schneider 2007). It will also provide explanations for the underlying motivations for linguistic variation and change in postcolonial countries such as Nigeria, where English plays a significant role in almost every sector and where there is a recurrent issue of competing English norms among the speakers of English.

References
IBM Corp. Released 2017. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 25.0. Armonk, NY: IBM
Corp.
Kachru, B. B. (1982). The Other Tongue. English Across Cultures. Urbana, Ill. University of
Illinois Press.
Olaniyi, O.K. & Josiah, U.E. (2013). Nigerian accents of English in the context of world
Englishes. World Journal of English Language 3, 38-49
Schneider, E.W. (2007). Postcolonial English: Varieties around the world. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Info

Day: 2019-05-24
Start time: 14:30
Duration: 00:30
Room: 103/ S69
Track: Sociolinguistics
Language: en

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