World Englishes on the Web: The Nigerian diaspora in the USA 9027207399, 9789027207395

Table of contents :
Table of contents
1 Introduction
2 The sociolinguistics of the Nigerian diaspora
3 Resources, repertoires, and authenticity in times of globalization
4 Data and methods
5 African Americans and their vernacular English
6 African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires
7 Nigerian linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires
8 Discussion
9 Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

Varieties of English Around the World

G63

World Englishes on the Web The Nigerian diaspora in the USA Mirka Honkanen

John Benjamins Publishing Company

World Englishes on the Web

Varieties of English Around the World (VEAW) issn 0172-7362 A monograph series devoted to sociolinguistic research, surveys and annotated text collections. The VEAW series is divided into two parts: a text series contains carefully selected specimens of Englishes documenting the coexistence of regional, social, stylistic and diachronic varieties in a particular region; and a general series which contains outstanding studies in the field, collections of papers devoted to one region or written by one scholar, bibliographies and other reference works. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see benjamins.com/catalog/veaw Editor Stephanie Hackert

University of Munich (LMU)

Editorial Board Manfred Görlach Cologne

Rajend Mesthrie

University of Cape Town

Peter L. Patrick

University of Essex

Edgar W. Schneider

University of Regensburg

Peter Trudgill

University of Fribourg

Walt Wolfram

North Carolina State University

Volume G63 World Englishes on the Web. The Nigerian diaspora in the USA by Mirka Honkanen

World Englishes on the Web The Nigerian diaspora in the USA

Mirka Honkanen University of Freiburg

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

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TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

doi 10.1075/veaw.g63 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: lccn 2020019601 (print) / 2020019602 (e-book) isbn 978 90 272 0739 5 (Hb) isbn 978 90 272 6088 8 (e-book)

© 2020 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com

Table of contents chapter 1 Introduction chapter 2 The sociolinguistics of the Nigerian diaspora 2.1 Nigeria as a reference point  10 2.1.1 The demographics of Nigeria: A buzzing giant  10 2.1.2 English in Nigeria  11 2.1.3 The status of Nigerian Pidgin  14 2.1.4 The educated Nigerian linguistic repertoire  17 2.2 Nigerians in the United States: “They are immigrants and they are Black”  18 chapter 3 Resources, repertoires, and authenticity in times of globalization 3.1 Crossing  24 3.2 The sociolinguistics of globalization  26 3.3 Resources and languages  28 3.4 Repertoires  30 3.5 Authenticity  35 3.5.1 Language and authenticity  35 3.5.2 Doing authentic Nigerianness  41 3.5.2.1 Key concepts of cultural membership  41 3.5.2.2 Approaches to cultural authenticity  44 chapter 4 Data and methods 4.1 Web forums as a data source  48 4.1.1 Nairaland: A Nigerian web forum  48 4.1.2 Nairaland as a virtual community  52 4.2 Corpus compilation and composition  54 4.2.1 The “World languages – digital languages” project  54 4.2.2 The Nairaland 2 corpus  55 4.2.3 The Net Corpora Administration Tool  55 4.2.4 The core 50 subcorpus  57

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4.3 Global comparisons: The Corpus of Global Web-based English  59 4.4 Methods of analysis  60 4.5 Legal and ethical issues  67 chapter 5 African Americans and their vernacular English 71 5.1 Relations between U.S.-Nigerians and African Americans: “How Deep Is The Resentment?”  72 5.2 Attitudes toward AAVE: “ibonics is identity for an african american”  82 5.3 Linguistic features of AAVE  85 chapter 6 African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 91 6.1 User types  91 6.1.1 User type I: Consistent experts  92 6.1.2 User type II: Inconsistent experts  94 6.1.3 User type III: Occasional users  96 6.1.4 User type IV: Minimal users  99 6.1.5 User type V: Non-users  100 6.2 AAVE features and practices  103 6.2.1 Authenticity issues  103 6.2.1.1 Controversial identities: “Reppin where am from faithfully”  103 6.2.1.2 Reactions to expert usage of AAVE: “We NIGERIANS don’t talk street”  111 6.2.2 Styleshifting into AAVE  119 6.2.2.1 Rap battling: “The music of hope. .and by the way its black”  119 6.2.2.2 Accommodation to one’s interlocutors: “Whatcha been up to homie?”  125 6.2.2.3 Fictional narratives: “Shes Ghetto and She’s got it all!”  127 6.2.3 Verbal markers  131 6.2.3.1 Habitual or iterative invariant be  133 6.2.3.2 Perfect done  140 6.2.3.3 Remote past been  147 6.2.3.4 Futurate finna  149 6.2.3.5 Futurate I’ma  154 6.2.4 Lexical and orthographic AAVE features  164 6.2.4.1 Spelling: “They call each others Doggs .. or is it dawgs?”  164 6.2.4.2 Lexis: “This is not hate! This is Real Talk!”  173



Table of contents 

6.2.5 P  ractices of minimal usage: “Like my African american brothers go say”  187 6.2.6 Highly popular features  202 6.2.6.1 Ain’t and other issues of negation: “I use the word ‘aint’ because i can”  202 6.2.6.2 Second-person plural pronoun y’all: “t’sup y’all?”  212 6.2.6.3 Augmentation with ass: “Is their sacral bone fractured or what?”  218 chapter 7 Nigerian linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 229 7.1 Nigerian Pidgin as a resource: “Pidgin English dey relieve stress well well”  229 7.2 Ethnic Nigerian languages: “My yoruba has improved ke? i’m a yoruba girl now!”  248 7.3 Nigerian English on the forum: “Critical parts of the Nigerian lexicon”  253 7.3.1 Morphosyntactic features  254 7.3.2 Lexical and stylistic features  259 7.3.3 Orthographic features: “Nigerians will grin and say ‘Yes sah’”  267 7.4 Abbreviations: “Thats the new lol o!”  273 chapter 8 Discussion

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chapter 9 Conclusion

305

References

315

Index

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chapter 1

Introduction 

like my homeboy will say,



THIS NA REALLY NAIJA1

This hybrid utterance, published on a Nigerian web forum, exemplifies many of the key topics of this book. It makes use of informal typography and punctuation as well as resources from several language varieties to make a personal comment about Nigerianness. The utterance combines the African-American lexical item homeboy (here, ‘a friend’), the Nigerian Pidgin copula verb na, as well as lexical and grammatical usages typical of Nigerian English (Naija ‘Nigeria’, will in place of would) in a unique, expressive mixture. Throughout this work, such multilingual utterances, produced by Nigerians in the United States, will be analyzed for their linguistic components as well as their identity and authenticity effects. This book contributes to the growing body of research that focuses on the linguistic – in addition to the political, cultural, and media – aspects of globalization. Different metaphors have been used to conceptualize language in globalization: Jacquemet (2005: 258–259) explains how language may “flow” around in the optimistic neoliberal discourse, and usually “spreads”, or even “penetrates”, in the dystopian views that see inequality and homogenization as the brand marks of globalization. What the celebratory and the critical positions share is a view of globalization as an intensified movement. Appadurai (1990: 296, 1996) suggests that this increased mobility pertains to people (forming an “ethnoscape”), media of communication and their products (“mediascape”), informational and other technologies (“technoscape”), monies (“financescape”), and political images and ideologies (“ideoscape”). The English language has played a significant role in enabling the creation of these global-level cultural landscapes, and has changed, adapted, and diversified in the process (Mair 2013b). Blommaert (2010: 2) argues that the processes of globalization have not only influenced linguistic forms and

.  This and all the following extracts from the data are reproduced in their original typographical, grammatical, and orthographic form. Only paragraph boundaries are occasionally changed.

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World Englishes on the Web

usages but, in fact, fundamentally “dislodged and destabilized” the very concept of language. Particularly large-scale migration and the wide spread of technologies of computer-mediated communication (CMC) have undermined long-held beliefs in sociolinguistics. In fields such as variationist sociolinguistics, dialectology, and the study of World Englishes, languages (as well as dialects and varieties) have been treated as if they were bounded entities – usually described as lists of features – tied to certain stable speech communities and geographical locations. However, it has been argued that our new globalized world “shatters the idea of territorially fixed communities and of a local knowledge capable of producing relatively stable and clear-cut identities” (Carter 2003: xvii). As one consequence, ethnicities have been partly “turned into commodified lifestyle options” and now, “ostensibly, the consumer’s personal taste and purchasing power matter as much or more than their early socialization” (Rampton 2000: 55). Proclaiming a new “sociolinguistics of globalization”, Blommaert insists that in this age of globalization, language needs to be seen in a new way – as “dynamic, fragmented and mobile” (2010: 197) – within “a sociolinguistics of mobile resources, not one of immobile languages” (2010: 102). This means, for instance, giving more attention to language contact – to “the linguistic mutations resulting from communicative practices happening in the multiple crevasses, open spaces, and networked ensembles of contact zones” (Jacquemet 2005: 260–261). One major contact zone is formed by cultural diasporas; these are “groups maintaining a sense of cultural belonging, physically distant from their ‘homelands’” (Coupland 2007: 122), such as the “new African Diasporas” (Koser 2003a) of “migrant communities from so-called ‘Black’ Africa currently living outside the African continent” (Koser 2003b: 4). Koser encourages research beyond the “victim diasporas” of involuntary migration (Cohen 1997) and into the internal heterogeneity of diaspora groups (Koser 2003b: 8). The country receiving the largest number of international immigrants yearly is the Unites States (Zong, Batalova & Hallock 2018). African immigrants now cross the Atlantic Ocean mainly seeking educational and work opportunities, thereby changing the racial and ethnic makeup of the United States. The country “finds itself awash in these global diasporas, no longer a closed space for the melting pot to work its magic, but yet another diasporic switching point” (Appadurai 1996: 172)  – a development which even the politics of the Trump administration have been unable to reverse. Although the African immigrant population in the United States is small in comparison to Caribbeans or Asians, it is growing fast: the number of African-born immigrants to the USA has approximately doubled every decade since 1970 (Anderson 2017). The African country sending the largest number of people is Nigeria, the source of 16% of those arrived before 2016 (Anderson 2017).



Chapter 1. Introduction

At the heart of this book is linguistic and social contact between the largest national subgroup of these economically motivated, recent African immigrants and the Black2 American population whose ancestors were brought to the United States involuntarily 150–400 years earlier on board slave ships. I describe how people of Nigerian heritage residing in the United States employ AfricanAmerican Vernacular English (henceforth AAVE), and what role it plays in the construction and negotiation of their immigrant, ethnic, national, racial, gender, and other social group identities. I explore the position of AAVE in the “ethnolinguistic repertoire” of Nigerians,3 which is the “fluid set of linguistic resources” that Nigerians “may use variably as they index their ethnic identities”, adopting Benor’s (2010: 160) analytical concept, developed based on her research on Jewish American speech. I will describe the use of AAVE by U.S.-Nigerians4 alongside other resources, such as Nigerian English, Nigerian Pidgin, and ethnic Nigerian languages. The investigation is based on a rich data set of social media interactions, full of non-standardized grammar, lexis, and orthography as well as metalanguage (Jaworski, Coupland & Galasinski 2004a), complex identity statements, narratives of belonging (Heyd 2016), multilingualism, and stylistic diversity. Repertoire is a relevant concept both at a group and an individual level. Two factors fundamentally shape an individual’s linguistic repertoire and performance: firstly, what resources they have access to; secondly, what identities they wish to project. In exploring identity, this study follows the constructivist understanding of the social world that has prevailed in the social sciences for the past decades. In it, identity is seen not as a fixed unity reflecting membership in social categories but rather as a “social positioning” accomplished over and over again in momentto-moment interactions (e.g., Bucholtz & Hall 2005). The use of AAVE resources may perhaps be viewed as “acts of identity”, whereby individuals choose the language resources that enable them to be associated with desirable social groups (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller 1985). The principal groups and identities relevant in this work are ethnic and national categories such as Nigerian, American, and

.  “Black” and “White” are capitalized following Lanehart (2015: 866) to emphasize that “these are not colors – they are concepts and social constructions; they are identities”. .  “Nigerian” is, strictly speaking, not an ethnic label, since the political and geographical unit of Nigeria consists of several hundred groups that see themselves as distinct. Related terminological distinctions are addressed in Sections 3.4 and 3.5.2.1. .  “U.S.-Nigerian” is used as a shorthand for people of (at least partial) Nigerian descent residing in the United States, without implying that they self-identify, or should self-identify, as Nigerian or American. This is the target population of this study.

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World Englishes on the Web

African American. Benor (2010: 168) argues that ethnic linguistic resources may be employed for indexing “stances, activities, and personae” related to the ethnicity. Therefore, I will also explore which more local and momentary identities U.S.Nigerians take up through the usage of AAVE. There has been scholarly interest in U.S.-Nigerians (Ogbaa 2003; Imoagene 2015, 2017) but not from a linguistic point of view. When reflecting on how immigrants try to approximate the linguistic behavior of their heritage society or some other group (for example, African Americans), authenticity emerges as a central concept. This book adopts a dynamic and constructivist view of authenticity as “authentication”, where authenticity is not something inherently present in certain speakers or language forms but an “outcome of constantly negotiated social practices” (Bucholtz 2003: 408). Throughout the analyses, attention is paid to what role language plays in performing authentic (honest, justifiable) ethnic and cultural identities and how authenticity is perceived, pursued, claimed, negotiated, and denied in the interactions observed. AAVE, the vernacular ethnolect associated with African Americans, is the most extensively researched non-standardized variety of English in the USA (Schneider 1996: 3) and possibly in the whole world. Since the 1960s, linguists have expended considerable energy in detailing AAVE grammar, hoping that by proving it to be as logical and well-formed a linguistic system as any other, they will diminish the social stigma AAVE carries (e.g., Green 2002). Structural descriptions are often accompanied by debates about the historical development of the variety (e.g., Rickford 1999; Poplack 1999), or discussions of internal variation (e.g., Labov 1972a; Wolfram 2004; Jones 2015) or issues of inequality, such as in education (e.g., Labov 1972a; Green 2002: Chapter 8). Furthermore, scholars have paid attention to pragmatics and style, describing the verbal practices or speech acts that grant AAVE much of its expressive power, such as “signifying”, “indirectness”, and language play (e.g., Smitherman 1977; Morgan 2002). Recently, a further strand of research has emerged in which scholars document the global spread and appropriation of AAVE resources by people who do not identify as African-American but who revere AAVE as the linguistic code of youth popular cultures, most prominently hip-hop (e.g., Bucholtz 1999; Ibrahim 2003; Alim, Ibrahim & Pennycook 2009; Akande 2012). The act of using AAVE resources has often been conceptualized as “crossing” (Rampton 1995, 2000) into a variety associated with an ethnic other (e.g., Bucholtz 1999). This line of study explores AAVE as a “super-central variety” of English that is relevant beyond its original geographical sphere and its native speakers (Mair 2013b). In his classification of varieties of English, Mair (2013b: 259–260) adapts de Swaan’s (2002) division of world’s languages into four hierarchical layers (hyper-central, super-central, central, and peripheral) depending on their number of speakers, i­nstitutional



Chapter 1. Introduction

s­ tatus, and transnational influence. Mair places AAVE in the second highest tier of varieties: it is not employed only by African Americans, but potentially affects also speakers of other varieties and languages both within the United States and internationally, if not worldwide (2013b: 262). The linguistic practices associated with hip-hop particularly have been “adapted and transformed by various racial and ethnic groups inside and outside of the United States” (Alim 2015: 2). My study joins this budding subfield of inquiry into non-native usages of AAVE. However, while these studies have tended to be formulated in optimistic terms, focusing on the spread and popularization of AAVE, my data highlight the persisting stigma attached to AAVE as well as the antagonism and competition characteristic of Nigerian–African-American intergroup relations. Linguistic prejudice in the United States merits exploration also outside the Black-White dyad. I will investigate Nigerians’ use of AAVE in a distinct communicative context that has appeared in our era of intense globalization as a central constituent of it: the internet. My data stem from a popular non-thematic web forum whose participants share some connection to Nigeria. The forum attracts members – who mainly self-identify as Nigerians – from all around the globe, thus forming a contact zone between diasporic Nigerians and their homeland. Blommaert (2010: 7–8) observes that many immigrants’ increased computer-mediated contacts to their countries of origin make their organization in space “local as well as translocal, real as well as virtual”, and “all this has effects on the structure and development of language repertoires and patterns of language use”. One goal of this project is to describe the “digital ethnolinguistic repertoire” (Benor 2010; Heyd & Mair 2014) of U.S.-Nigerians, and how they mobilize certain parts of it in their online communication to enact relevant identities. Knowing that CMC platforms are highly important as “site[s] for the construction of diasporic identity” (Hinrichs 2011: 3), this web forum is likely to be a vital locus for many to act out Nigerian identities. As a study of computer-mediated communication, this book aligns itself with the socially situated, user- and community-based approach promoted, for example, by Androutsopoulos (2006). It marks a clear departure from the early homogenizing and simplifying explorations of the language of the internet, such as Crystal’s (2001: 18) “Netspeak”  – in his words, “a type of language displaying features that are unique to the Internet, and encountered in [email, chats, virtual words, and the web], arising out of its character as a medium which is electronic, global, and interactive”. My study dismisses the idea that there is one variety of internet English, or web forum English, or even Nigerian web forum English that all or most users produce. Instead, the linguistic situation on the target forum is characterized above all by diversity, as thousands of individuals bring in their various migratory, linguistic, familial, educational, and other backgrounds as well as their goals and expectations about the ensuing interactions.

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World Englishes on the Web

Other ­frequent ­tendencies in the first CMC studies included excessive emphasis on what online communication lacks in comparison to face-to-face situations (“deficit approaches”), restrictions imposed by the media of communication (“technological determinism”), and comparisons of CMC to speech and writing (Thurlow, Lengel & Tomic 2004), whereas more recently, CMC scholars have turned their attention to issues of community and identity online (Androutsopoulos 2006). The Nigerian web forum investigated here is not just a practical site for data collection – it forms an important backdrop against which the language use and identity work of these U.S.-Nigerians are analyzed. This research project is also more than tangentially a study of multilingual discourse on the internet. The majority of studies on language contact and multilingualism have focused on spoken phenomena – on “conversational code-switching”, as first by Gumperz (1982) and then many others in his footsteps – at the expense of exploring multilingualism in written media (Sebba 2012: 1–2). Web forum communication takes place in writing; therefore, the study contributes to the under-researched area of written multilingualism. One key research topic in both multi- and monolingual CMC is orthography. The participatory web can be characterized as a “partially regulated [orthographic] space” (Sebba 2007: 43), where users may experiment with language with relatively little policing from any authorities. Data from such sources open exciting avenues for exploring the orthographic representation of vernacular voices and resources without established spelling standards, such as elements of AAVE or Nigerian Pidgin. In this study, orthography is viewed as a socially significant and embedded practice, which must be examined in its cultural context to understand how it contributes to identity work (Sebba 2007). The impoverished nature of many CMC platforms as communicative environments in terms of visual and oral paralinguistic cues makes orthographic choices highly significant. Non-standardized spellings can take up vital roles, for example, in clarifying the meaning of a message as “contextualization cues” (Gumperz 1982: 131) or in indexing (Silverstein 1976; Ochs 1990, 2009) certain social identities (Honkanen 2013). This project is based on a large corpus compiled from a diasporic Nigerian web forum. However, most of the analyses focus on a sample of 50 participants located in the United States. The study combines ethnographic insights and close discourse-analytic readings of usage patterns with frequency counts to analyze specific morphosyntactic, lexical, and orthographic linguistic resources and phenomena that arose as significant in initial qualitative analyses of individual repertoires. Close attention is paid also to metalanguage – that is, any “refer[ence] in [one’s] speech or writing to any aspect of language use, including [one’s] own” – as it can function as a window into exploring “language attitudes and language awareness” (Jaworski, Coupland & Galasinski 2004b: 3). The challenges of doing



Chapter 1. Introduction

corpus linguistics on such messy – pseudonymous, non-native, grammatically and orthographically non-standardized  – data will be addressed. The solutions suggested emphasize the importance of combining sophisticated corpus tools, such as the Net Corpora Administration Tool employed in this project, with deep ethnographic familiarity of the data source and its technological, community, cultural, and sociolinguistic aspects. After this introductory chapter, which situates the study within the larger field of sociolinguistic inquiry, I will begin by providing background information about the target population as well as the social and linguistic context of the study. ­Chapter 2 also presents the linguistic profile of educated Nigerians in Nigeria, which will serve as a reference point for the later discussion of U.S.-Nigerians. Chapter 3 is theoretical in nature and discusses language in globalization, introducing Blommaert’s (2010) “sociolinguistics of globalization”, and critically examining some established concepts of sociolinguistics and multilingualism, such as “crossing” (Rampton 1995) and “repertoire” (e.g., Gumperz 1964; Benor 2010). It also presents an overview of both older and newer understandings of authenticity in sociolinguistics, setting the stage for the exploration of “authentication” (Bucholtz 2003) processes of diasporic Nigerian identities, which runs through the empirical part of the study. Data and methods are introduced in Chapter 4. The online platform that serves as the data source is presented as well as my corpus and the tool developed for retrieving data from it. The chosen methods of analysis will be discussed along with a number of particular challenges of theoretical, practical, and ethical nature encountered in the course of the project. Chapter 5 offers background information about African Americans and their vernacular English with the first findings of the study. These findings concern the rapport between African Americans and U.S.-Nigerians, and Nigerians’ attitudes toward AAVE, based on an investigation of metalinguistic and other relevant comments on the web forum. The main empirical Chapter 6 discusses the use of AAVE by U.S.-Nigerians, describing the usage of specific AAVE linguistic resources along with wider trends and practices. Chapter 7 zooms in on other significant languages and varieties, addressing the role of Nigerian Pidgin, ethnic Nigerian languages, and N ­ igerian English in diasporic Nigerians’ repertoires. In the discussion in Chapter 8, conclusions are drawn from the many examples with regard to the functions of AAVE and other multilingual resources in U.S.-Nigerians’ online communication. Authentication of ethnic identities as a topic is returned to as well. The conclusion (Chapter 9) looks back and forward, summarizing the key findings and suggesting directions for future research.



chapter 2

The sociolinguistics of the Nigerian diaspora As familiarity with the socio-linguistic realities of a population is necessary for contextualizing and understanding its members’ linguistic behavior, this chapter provides background information for explaining the presence of certain linguistic resources in the repertoires of U.S.-Nigerians – and the absence of others. It presents a short portrayal of Nigeria and Nigerians, focusing particularly on linguistic matters, and contrasts educated Nigerians in Nigeria and in the United States. Both repertoire-shaping factors mentioned in the introduction are relevant for the discussion. Access to resources will be thematized in terms of likely routes for particular language resources to enter Nigerian repertoires in Nigeria as opposed to the USA. The identity aspirations of Nigerians abroad may be directed toward either the home or the host society: expatriates may try to align their linguistic behavior with Nigerians in Nigeria to the best of their knowledge, or choose to distinguish themselves and construct a primarily American or American-Nigerian identity instead. Either way, language repertoires in Nigeria are likely to remain a relevant point of reference. When diasporic Nigerians take an interest in being considered real Nigerians, authenticity emerges as a central concept. I suggest that the linguistic competence of educated Nigerians in Nigeria may serve as a basis for comparison against which people claiming a Nigerian identity outside Nigeria might measure the appropriateness of their performance. With this in mind, an account will be given of the repertoire of educated speakers in Nigeria, relying on previous scholarly descriptions of language use in West Africa. Before that, general information about Nigeria and its linguistic ecology will be provided. After identifying the typical Nigerian repertoire, attention will be turned to the situation in the diaspora. Basic facts about the Nigerian population in the United States are followed by preliminary ponderings about possible differences between the linguistic repertoires of Nigerians in the USA and in Nigeria.

 World Englishes on the Web

2.1  Nigeria as a reference point 2.1.1  The demographics of Nigeria: A buzzing giant Nigeria is a densely populated federal republic in sub-Saharan West Africa. The territories today known as Nigeria were colonized by the United Kingdom from the 1885 Berlin Conference till Nigerian independence in 1960. Prior to British rule, Nigeria had not existed as a cultural or political unit, but the area had been populated by numerous separate kingdoms and empires; this poses challenges for national unity, addressed in Section 3.5.2.1. The first 60 years of Nigerian independence have been tumultuous, including, for instance, a failed attempt by the Eastern Region to form the independent Republic of Biafra, smothered in the civil war of 1967–1970, military juntas leading the country through most of the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, and now the Islamic extremists of Boko Haram terrorizing the northeast since the early 2000s. Despite its relative wealth stemming from crude oil, Nigeria struggles with problems such as poor infrastructure, unsteady power supply, corruption, and poverty (Central Intelligence Agency 2019). According to estimates, the population of Nigeria reached 200 million in 2018 (Central Intelligence Agency 2019). This represents a 35% increase from 2005 (United Nations Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs 2006: 16), which is the time my oldest data date to. Due to this very rapid growth, the United Nations predicts Nigeria to contribute the most to the global population growth in 2015–2050 second to only India, and to be the third most populous country in the world by 2050 (United Nations Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs 2015: 4). The worldwide presence and relevance of Nigerians is likely to only increase in the decades to come, and this book, therefore, contributes to understanding people in and from one of the leading nations in the world – at the very least in terms of population – in the 21st century. Nigerians are a very dynamic and business-oriented people (Faraclas 2013: 176). Another factor one cannot escape noticing is the heavy influence of religion: the Nigerian society is strongly religious, with 51.6% Muslim, 46.9% Christian, and the remaining 1.5% confessing various “traditionalist” or “unspecified” beliefs (Central Intelligence Agency 2019). The population is highly diverse also in terms of ethnicity, languages, and customs. There are over 250 ethnic groups, the most significant ones being Hausa at 27%, and Yoruba and Igbo at 14% each in 2013 (Central Intelligence Agency 2019). Approximately 500 regionally bound ethnic languages are spoken that stem from three language families, with Niger-Congo languages concentrated in the south, Afro-Asiatic in the north, and Nilo-Saharan in the northeast (Central Intelligence Agency 2019). Most widely used are the respective languages of the big ethnic groups mentioned above. Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo are known as the “major languages” of Nigeria, and they enjoy certain



Chapter 2.  The sociolinguistics of the Nigerian diaspora

privileges in education and politics (Federal Republic of Nigeria 1979, 1981). The role of two other important languages  – English and Nigerian Pidgin  – is discussed in more detail next. 2.1.2  English in Nigeria The first contact between Nigerians and the English language took place in the 16th and 17th centuries as Britons, together with other Europeans, set up their forts and trading posts in West Africa. From the mid-19th century onward, English was promoted and taught to the masses in Christian missionary schools (e.g., Spencer 1971; Taiwo 2020). English transformed from a foreign to a second language as the colonial rulers made it the language of instruction and administration, with Hausa functioning as an auxiliary administrative language in the north. At the Nigerian independence in 1960, English retained its position as the de facto official language of the federation. Since 1979, the Nigerian constitution has allowed also for the three major languages to be used at high-level politics (­Bamgbose 1996: 358; Federal Republic of Nigeria 1979: Section 51). However, English is employed for written communication in the government and administration, and it serves a range of other official functions as well, effectively being “the language of civil service, the judiciary, science and technology, commerce and industry” in Nigeria (Bamgbose 1996: 359, 364). The bulk of Nigerian mass media rely on English, with English-language print media and news broadcasts carrying more prestige than those presented in local languages, while in cultural activities such as literature, cinema, television drama series, and Christian practice, English is used alongside Nigerian languages (Bamgbose 1996: 365). Learning and using English at home is restricted to “elite families” (Deuber 2005: 47), and Faraclas (2013: 177) estimates the number of English native speakers in Nigeria to have been “no more than a few million” in 2013. Most Nigerians who speak English have learned it at school. The National Policy on Education requires that pre-school and the first three years of primary school be taught in the locally significant indigenous language, but this is only partially implemented, particularly at the pre-primary level and concerning non-major languages (Bamgbose 1996: 363–364), and English still dominates in practice. One reason for this is that parents do not know the benefits of mother-tongue instruction but demand their children be taught in English (Akere 1995: 182). English is the medium of instruction for all throughout the secondary and tertiary levels of education. However, Akere presents it as a well-known fact that the standards of English language teaching, and hence the pupils’ learning outcomes, are poor, and the number of teachers insufficient throughout the educational system (1995: 180). Moreover, since only 59% of Nigerian children attend primary school, and only half of the children of the appropriate age go to secondary school (UNICEF 2018), English is



 World Englishes on the Web

by no means available to all. Inequalities between states and socioeconomic classes are dramatic, with much fewer children entering and completing school in some northern states and in poorer families. Nonetheless, school attendance rates are rather improving than deteriorating (UNICEF 2018). All in all, at least a fair competence in English can be expected from educated Nigerian citizens. Although English is an overtly prestigious language in Nigeria, its usage may have negative connotations in some contexts. It is favored in formal situations and in writing, but indigenous languages and Nigerian Pidgin may be preferred for informal spoken interactions (Bamgbose 1996: 368–369). Speaking English in less formal contexts may be seen as “arrogance or unfriendliness” (Deuber 2005: 50), and English as a “non-Nigerian language” (Akande 2012: 66), evoking memories of the British colonial rule (Jowitt 1995: 36). Nonetheless, many would still consider it the most acceptable candidate for a national language, as it is not tied to any ethnic group (Bamgbose 1971: 46–47). English is also favored in the pragmatic, outward-looking thinking of citizens whose highest priority is to modernize and develop Nigeria, as English is by far the most practical language for international communication worldwide (Jowitt 1995: 58, 63), despite Nigeria’s immediate neighbors being primarily Francophone. Such positive views are exemplified by Taiwo’s (2010: 182) characterization of the English language as “one of the greatest legacies bequeathed to the people of Nigeria at the end of colonialism” that functions as a link between ethnic groups and to the outside world. English in Nigeria shows influences from various sources. As Bamgbose notes, “[p]ost-imperial English in Nigeria has British origins, but it has now assumed Nigerian garb and acquired some American influences” (1996: 370). The long shadow of colonialism is most visible in the educational system, where British English (BrE) is considered the target of language learning (Awonusi 1994: 76). In the freshly independent Nigeria, a British accent was considered more prestigious than an American one, and too close a resemblance to any native-speaker accent came across as “affected or even snobbish” (Bamgbose 1971: 41–42). Since those times, however, different varieties of American English (AmE) have increasingly been spreading to Nigeria. Awonusi (1994: 77) focuses on “economic, political, educational and cultural co-operation and interaction” as factors, while more recently, Igboanusi (2003) emphasizes the role of media and popular culture (cable television, Hollywood cinema, popular music, the internet, etc.) in this process. Consequently, mainstream AmE now also enjoys some prestige in the Nigerian society, alongside the more traditionally high-status BrE (Igboanusi 2003). AAVE might carry covert prestige for people wanting to align with African-American popular or street culture and identities. It can definitely be found in Nigerian hiphop, where “most rappers use [it] in order to connect with the global hip-hop culture” (Akande 2012: 2). Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole have global



Chapter 2.  The sociolinguistics of the Nigerian diaspora 

c­ urrency as mediators of cultural spheres such as reggae or Rastafarianism, which some Nigerians might be interested in as well. Finally, in what Bamgbose (1996: 370) refers to as “Nigerian garb”, English in Nigeria has arguably developed peculiarities and norms of its own that are not found, or not accepted, in standardized usage in Britain or the USA. Diverging conventions can be found at all levels from accent and grammar to lexicon and pragmatics. In the World Englishes paradigm of English linguistics, these divergences are seen as having resulted in the emergence of a new, local variety of English, called Nigerian English (NigE). In addition to this book series, such an approach is found, for example, in the Varieties of English textbooks (Kortmann & Upton 2008; Schneider 2008; Burridge & Kortmann 2008; Mesthrie 2008), where NigE is one of the varieties whose phonological (Gut 2008) and morphosyntactic (Alo & Mesthrie 2008) particularities are listed. Also the electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English (eWAVE) (Kortmann, Lunkenheimer & Ehret 2020) contains its own entry for NigE (Taiwo 2020). The eWAVE5 is a database encompassing information about 235 non-standardized morphosyntactic features in 51 varieties of English and 26 English-lexifier pidgin and creole languages, compiled by a team of experts led by Kortmann, Lunkenheimer, and Ehret (2020); its feature catalog enables comparisons of NigE with other varieties. There is a growing body of research into different aspects of Nigerian ­English (e.g., Bamgbose 1971, 1995; Kujore 1985; Jowitt 1991, 2019; Blench 2005; Gut 2005, 2008; Alo & Mesthrie 2008; Fuchs, Gut & Soneye 2013; Kperogi 2015; U ­ nuabonah & Gut 2018). Kujore’s (1985) and Jowitt’s (1991, 2019) monographs discuss lexical as well as grammatical, phonological, and prosodic variations frequent in Nigeria. Jowitt (1991) includes, additionally, a 100-plus-page glossary and a rich theoretical and sociolinguistic discussion. In the “Foreword”, Banjo (1991: viii) calls Jowitt’s documentation of the emergent NigE lexis “the final proof that the language is adapting itself to the local situation”. Jowitt’s 2019 monograph checks features classified as NigE against evidence from the Nigerian component of the International Corpus of English (ICE). Released in 2013, ICE-Nigeria contains one million words of written and spoken “Educated Nigerian English” (Gut 2012: 4). While a valuable addition to the ICE corpus family, ICE-Nigeria seems too small for the type of lexical investigation Jowitt (2019) is trying to undertake. In another recent take on the topic, Kperogi (2015) presents a collection of usages he has encountered as a journalist in Nigeria and a professor of journalism in the USA that he judges as peculiarly Nigerian. They include, for instance, tautological expressions, conversion, non-standardized spellings, semantic extensions,

.  The eWAVE is available online at http://ewave-atlas.org/.

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idioms, stiff and recondite formal lexemes, and various practices of title and name usage. Kperogi (2015: 5–22) suggests four basic mechanisms that contribute to the emergence of new features in NigE: (1) creative linguistic improvisation, (2) retention of archaic BrE expressions, (3) frequent errors becoming accepted, and (4) mixture of American and British expressions. However, it is striking how easily scholars succumb to prescriptivism in discussing NigE. For instance, Kperogi tries to classify features either as “legitimate deviations that deserve to be dignified” (2015: 12) or as “usage errors that are the consequence of ignorance” (2015: 23). His concerns are pragmatically motivated as he thinks that while [Nigerians] can – and indeed should – occasionally manipulate the English language to compel it to show sensitivity to their socio-linguistic idiosyncrasies, they should be careful to not linguistically ghettoize themselves to the point of impeding international communication in English. (Kperogi 2015: 23)

Kperogi’s fears seem exaggerated, considering the large lexical core shared by the different varieties of English. Moreover, most of the morphosyntactic and orthographic “errors” that Kperogi worries about do not seem to be the type that could make an utterance incomprehensible to non-Nigerians. Similarly judgmental, Jowitt suggests distinguishing between “errors […] due to wrong learning, […] generally regarded by educated people as errors” and “variants […] acceptable to and used by most educated Nigerians” (1991: 51, 62). However, he admits that such criteria only operate if one sets (fairly arbitrary) boundaries for defining how many people must accept and/or use a certain form and who exactly counts as educated (Jowitt 1991). However, instead of abandoning the problematic distinction as a consequence, Jowitt makes the radical suggestion that while “many of the phonological and lexical features” can be accepted as variants, “there are powerful reasons for regarding the differences of syntax and morphology as errors which it should be the goal of teaching to eradicate” (1991: 107). These scholars’ erring on the prescriptive side is more understandable when considering that neither comes from a (socio-)linguistic background; Kperogi is a journalist and communication scholar, and Jowitt an English teacher from Britain. In addition to the codes discussed above, the linguistic landscape of Nigeria prominently features one more language, related to English but incomprehensible to most English-speakers outside of West Africa: Nigerian Pidgin. 2.1.3  The status of Nigerian Pidgin Nigerian Pidgin (NigP) is an English-lexifier contact language used widely in Nigeria, in particular in informal settings and as a lingua franca between ethnic



Chapter 2.  The sociolinguistics of the Nigerian diaspora 

groups. The labels “Nigerian Pidgin” or “Pidgin” are favored in this work over “Nigerian Pidgin English” to emphasize that in my view, like many other linguists’ (Akande 2012: 63–64), NigP should be considered a language in its own right. This is not necessarily how the Nigerian public sees it. In Mann’s large-scale attitudinal survey with 1,200 participants, 69.8% consider it a variety of English (2009: 355), and the autoglossonym “Broken” implies a view of Pidgin as a degenerated form of English. The complete details of the emergence and development of NigP are not fully reliable, but it definitely cannot be attributed to “any one causal factor or language community” only (Faraclas 2013: 177). Various Afro-European contact languages emerged in the region during interactions with European and American “merchants, adventurers, pirates, whalers, sailors, soldiers, and many others” from the 15th century onward (Faraclas 2013: 176–177). Faraclas identifies a wide range of contributing sources, including not only the superstrate English and the local substrate languages but also general second-language acquisition processes, other pidgins and creoles spoken in the area, and after the abolition of slave trade in 1807, repatriated slaves and their descendants (2013: 177). Many scholars (e.g., Spencer 1971: 9; Akande 2012: 62) make explicit the influence of 15th-century Portuguese traders, who left their mark in the form of some central words, such as pikin (‘a child’), palava (‘trouble’), or sabi (‘to know’). However, despite this multitude of influences, Faraclas (1996: 3) claims NigP has always “been used primarily as a means of communication among Nigerians rather than between Nigerians and traders, missionaries or other foreigners” but that many creolists overlook this in their descriptions; Akande (2012: 62) agrees. NigP enjoys “no overt prestige” in the Nigerian society (Faraclas 2013: 177). Evaluating its “ethnolinguistic vitality” (Giles, Bourhis & Taylor 1977), Mann points out that Pidgin speakers have a “low status” in the Nigerian society, and the language enjoys little “institutional support” (2000: 465). It has no official recognition at any governmental or educational levels; there is no mention of its existence or rights in the constitution, nor is it fostered at the universities or schools as a medium or a subject of instruction. However, Mann argues that these traditional criteria might not suffice for judging the attractiveness of a language, as NigP nonetheless enjoys “tangible and growing vitality” especially in informal domains (2000: 471). Attitudes have traditionally been negative, associating NigP with lack of education and a deficient knowledge of English (Akande & Salami 2010: 70). The most popular argument against Pidgin is the fear that speaking it has a negative impact on one’s English competence (Mann 2009: 360). Increasingly, however, NigP is used by many educated people alongside English, and some have started to show more positive attitudes toward it (Deuber 2005; Akande & Salami 2010;

 World Englishes on the Web

Akande 2012: 62; Honkanen forthcoming a). It is widely used on university campuses and in more and more professional encounters as well (Mann 1993: 171– 172), and it has a vital role in Nigerian popular culture, such as hip-hop (Akande 2012). Moreover, it is gaining more presence and a wider range of functions in the Nigerian public space and media, for example on television, the radio, in advertisements, and popular music (Mann 1993: 172, 1996: 3; Deuber 2005: 53–54; Akande 2012: 66; Jowitt 2019: 18–19). Storch explores the representation of NigP in different grassroots media, finding it to be “a strong symbol of liberation and new forms of citizenhood” (2018: 312). In 2009, an initiative called “Naija Languej Akedemi” was launched by Nigerian academics, supported by the French Institute for Research in Africa, to promote Pidgin – or Naijá, as they prefer to call it – for instance by creating an orthographic system for it (Ofulue & Esizimetor 2010). However, these suggestions would need support in the educational system and/or mass media in order to spread to the wider public. NigP, like any other language, is not a uniform code used in an identical manner by all its speakers. Scholars invariably make reference to internal variation and speaker types (Faraclas 1996: 2, 2008: 340, 2013; Deuber 2005: 65; Akande 2012). Faraclas (1996: 2) points out that NigP is, in fact, a pidgin only for a minority of its speakers – those who use it for limited transactions and with significant mothertongue influence. Instead, many rely on it competently for a significant portion of their daily interactions. In such situations, the label “pidgin” no longer describes the situation accurately; other terms have been suggested such as “extended pidgin” (Todd 1974: 5), or “pidgincreole” by Philip Baker (Bakker 2008: 131; Velupillai 2015: 20). An extended pidgin is “used beyond the original limited function which caused it to come into being” (Todd 1974: 5), while a pidgincreole has been defined as “a former pidgin that has become the main language of a speech community and/or a mother tongue for some of its speakers” (Bakker 2008: 131). Faraclas (2013: 177) describes this native-like NigP as “fast, fluent, innovative and ‘deep’”. Pidgin may be the first language learned particularly in the south-central part of the country, in the Niger Delta cities of Warri, Sapele, and Benin City. The third “social lect” of NigP, according to Faraclas (1996: 2), is a “decreolized” form found among educated Nigerians that shows interference from English, but he does not elaborate on this. Deuber (2005) examines radio broadcasts and conversations between educated speakers in Lagos to determine whether the relationship between the local pidgin and the superstrate English could be described as a continuum, as has been done in post-colonial Anglophone Caribbean (e.g., DeCamp 1971; Bickerton 1973). Deuber’s findings suggest that even urban middle-class NigP is “relatively distant from English” and, thus, cannot be seen as a midpoint on a continuum (2005: 201). Rather than a continuum, Deuber finds code-switching and lexical borrowing between NigP and NigE (2005: 202).



Chapter 2.  The sociolinguistics of the Nigerian diaspora 

Faraclas claims there are “tens of millions of ” early, fluent users of NigP “across southern Nigeria and in urban areas throughout the entire country” (2013: 177). Very early acquisition of NigP seems to be an intensifying trend of the past few decades, as no current researcher questions Pidgin being used as a first language, as Mann still did in the early nineties (1993: 169). The total number of NigP speakers can only be estimated. Faraclas suggests that “at least half ” of the Nigerian population use “some form” of NigP (2013: 176), whereas Akande claims that already “more than two-thirds” are Pidgin speakers (2012: 62). Of Mann’s 1,200 survey participants, 88.8% claim some competence in Pidgin (2009: 354). Due to its popularity among the young, the proportion of Pidgin speakers continues to rise (Faraclas 2008: 340). At the same time, however, the age group with the least favorable attitudes in Mann’s survey was 15–19-year-olds; this was the smallest group, though, and the difference was not statistically significant (2009: 358–359). Differences in attitudes have been suggested also between geographical locations (Akande & Salami 2010) and ethnic groups (Elugbe & Omamor 1991: 141) NigP is the most widely spoken pidgin in the world, and a very important language at the level of the entire Nigerian society. In Faraclas’s (2013: 177) words, it “has become far and away the most popular, widely spoken, readily learned, practically useful, and fastest growing language in Nigeria today”. In a country as divided along ethnic and linguistic lines as Nigeria is, NigP could represent a hope for more unity as “the only language that both the educated and the uneducated, irrespective of ethnic affinities, can identify with” (Akande & Salami 2010: 72). Despite these prospects, however, there seems to be little actual interest in developing and promoting NigP; in recent attitudinal surveys, the majority reacted negatively to the idea of strengthening the role of Pidgin in schools as a medium or a subject of instruction (Mann 2009: 360; Akande & Salami 2010: 77). Mann (1993: 175) calls this “the sociopsychological tragedy of [NigP] in Nigerian society”. 2.1.4  The educated Nigerian linguistic repertoire I suggest that Nigeria is an important reference point for linguistic behavior for diasporic Nigerians, be it a target to aim at or a shackle to shed, when they reflect on and construct their social identities through language. Hence, to allow comparison, it is useful to draft the linguistic portrait of an average educated NigerianNigerian. I focus on the better-educated and better-off segment of the Nigerian society even though that is not where the majority of people fall6 because those are the people who are most on a par with U.S.-Nigerians in terms of socioeconomic .  The Central Intelligence Agency (2019) estimates 40% of Nigerians above the age of 14 to be illiterate, and 70% of the whole population to live below the poverty line (estimates from 2015 and 2010, respectively).

 World Englishes on the Web

characteristics, and who will be chosen as targets if diasporic Nigerians aspire to write or speak like a Nigerian. The typical Nigerian learns one of the indigenous languages as first. There are some NigE and NigP first-language speakers, but they are a minority. Possibly more than half of the population speak Hausa, Yoruba, or Igbo as their first language, and one would be mistaken to forget the several hundred smaller local languages spoken across the country. Many pick up another major Nigerian language as a second language. This applies particularly to speakers of minor languages, many of whom adopt one of the big three as an additional resource (Akande & Salami 2010: 73). Moreover, educated Nigerians learn English at school, being exposed to it for most of their school years as both a subject and the medium of instruction. Later, they will need it at the university as well as the workplace. A typical English-speaking Nigerian will – in some cases willingly, but perhaps more often unconsciously – employ forms originating in different varieties of English. The Nigerian educational system strives to transfer a version of standardized British English; however, as the teachers and other local authorities speak and write NigE, that is what the students end up producing, too (Jowitt 1995: 57). Through media and popular culture, pieces of various standardized and non-standardized varieties of English from North America and the Caribbean may enter some Nigerians’ repertoires. Finally, the third important pillar in the repertoire is NigP. Competence in this code varies depending on the location, age, and level of education of the speaker, as well as their individual life paths, and their and their parents’ attitudes, but typically Pidgin is learned as a second language through informal inter-ethnic encounters in settings such as “marketplaces and workplaces, schools and universities, military and police barracks” (Faraclas 2013: 177). Faraclas points out that already long before colonialism and the arrival of English on the African continent, the repertoire of the “average West African child” contained “at least one or two local languages as well as pidginized, creolized, and/ or koineized regional market language” (2013: 176). Indeed, Nigeria has a long history in the relatively peaceful coexistence of a multitude of languages, and this culture of multilingualism is still vital in the 21st century. This multilingual repertoire of educated Nigerian citizens can serve as a relevant reference point to Nigerians in the diaspora as well. 2.2  N  igerians in the United States: “They are immigrants and they are Black” The United States is the country hosting the largest number of Nigerian-born immigrants in the world, with 376,000 Nigerians and their children living there



Chapter 2.  The sociolinguistics of the Nigerian diaspora 

in 2009–20137 (Migration Policy Institute 2015: 1–2). Nigerians form a rather new, growing diaspora, 49% of which arrived in or after 2000, and only 25,000 earlier than 1980. The first generation, who emigrated from Nigeria, consists of 213,000 persons, while their 163,000 U.S.-born offspring (with at least one parent born in Nigeria) constitute what is here referred to as the second generation (Migration Policy Institute 2015: 2–3). Note that third-generation immigrants, of Nigerian-born grandparents, are missing from the figures, which implicitly reveals the Migration Policy Institute’s take on the controversial issue of who should be considered Nigerian in the diaspora – for the Institute, the third generation does not count. With 63% of the second generation under the age of 18 (Migration Policy Institute 2015: 3), however, the third generation is still relatively limited in size – although it will most definitely grow strongly in the future – and excluding it does not completely distort the figure. This gives us an idea of the size of the target population of this study, which includes all people with a potential interest in and reasons for claiming a Nigerian identity in the United States. Data about geographical distribution are only available for the first generation. The most significant hubs for Nigerians are the metropolitan areas of New York City, Houston, Washington, Atlanta, Dallas, and Chicago (Migration Policy Institute 2015: 7). As Kent (2007: 3) observes, U.S.-Nigerians “are immigrants and they are black – two distinctive social groups in the United States – which influences their adaptation into the social and economic fabric of their new country”. However, on average, they seem to fare rather well. Typical routes for Nigerians to arrive in the USA include diversity visas,8 family reunification, and temporary student visas leading to permanent residency (Kent 2007). Only a negligible portion arrive with refugee status: for example, in 2007–2012, only 104 Nigerian refugees were admitted – 0.15% of all African refugees (Office of Refugee Resettlement 2012: 83). The Nigerian immigrant population is “highly educated”, comparing favorably to the overall U.S. population in terms of educational attainment (Migration Policy Institute 2015: 3). Of Nigerian immigrants aged 25 or older, 29% have completed a master’s, a PhD, or an advanced professional degree, and a further 37% have a bachelor’s degree as their highest completed degree, whereas only 11% and 20% of the total U.S. population, respectively, have achieved the same educational levels. Close to half (46%) of diasporic Nigerians work in professional or

.  Figures from the early 2010s are presented because that is the time period from which my newest data date. The significance of Nigerians in the United States continues to grow. .  The purpose of the diversity visa program is to improve representation from less common countries of origin. Nigerians still qualify because of the massive immigration to the USA from the Caribbean.

 World Englishes on the Web

­ anagerial positions – a notably higher portion than the 31% of the entire U.S. m labor force working in such positions (Migration Policy Institute 2015: 5). Nonetheless, this has not translated directly to equally high incomes, as Nigerian households have only a slightly higher median annual income than all U.S. households: $52,000 and $50,000, respectively (Migration Policy Institute 2015: 5). Kent suggests that Black immigrants are often “overqualified and underpaid” for the positions they manage to secure in the USA (2007: 3). Nigerians have been called a model minority in North America, who do better than the population average. However, Imoagene (2017: 18) problematizes this, pointing out that firstly, most emigrated Nigerians represent the Nigerian elite, and secondly, their racial status as Black makes their assimilation process incomparable to that of other known model minorities such as Asians. Turning to the question of what language resources are available for Nigerians in the United States, certain differences to the situation in Nigeria are apparent. First of all, diasporic Nigerians can be expected to have a more restricted command of ethnic Nigerian languages. Passing heritage languages on to one’s children is part of the process of “cultural reproduction”, which works on a different basis in “deterritorialized” groups, such as diasporas (Appadurai 1996: 49). Nigerian languages have no practical use in the diasporic location outside the home context and local expatriate communities. Nigerian communities exist to varying degrees in different diasporic locations and even if they do, not every immigrant chooses to interact with them. While it is not uncommon in Nigeria to know more than one ethnic language – in Mann’s (2009: 354) study, 45% of respondents speak four or five languages – diasporic Nigerians are likely to have competence in their heritage language at most, and even that might be severely truncated. Even if there is will to learn a Nigerian language, there are not many resources to support this endeavor. Similarly, the acquisition of NigP is jeopardized. In Nigeria, Pidgin is learned and used in informal inter-ethnic encounters with peers, but in the USA, English naturally plays this role. Pidgin may be completely absent from diasporic Nigerian homes due to negative parental attitudes adopted back in Nigeria. One can certainly expect reduction of the repertoire in the diaspora in terms of Nigerian linguistic codes. While speaking good English is advantageous in Nigeria, it is absolutely crucial in the United States. U.S.-born Nigerians learn English first or simultaneously with a Nigerian heritage language, and their competence in English is generally high. One may expect competition between Nigerian and local influences on the specific forms of English used. While American English exerts influence globally (Mair 2016: 24), U.S.-Nigerians have an even easier access to North American varieties than Nigerians in Nigeria do, including colloquial and standardized AmE



Chapter 2.  The sociolinguistics of the Nigerian diaspora 

as well as AAVE. U.S.-Nigerians have direct contact with these varieties in their daily encounters at school, university, or work, as well as through various media. Friendships, and romantic and business partnerships are formed and lead to intimate language contact. This increased American influence may come at the expense of British and Nigerian varieties of English. Mair shows how web forum members based in Nigeria prefer British spellings, while U.S.-Nigerians rely on AmE norms (2016: 29). According to Mair (2013b: 262), AmE influences BrE but there is not much current impact vice versa. He speculates on the diminishing, “not transportable” value of NigE in the global Nigerian diaspora, and suggests that after emigrating, Nigerians “easily give up usages characteristic of Nigerian Standard English” (Mair 2016: 32). Mair expects NigP to be appreciated in the diaspora more than NigE, comparing the situation to the “inversion of prestige on the national and transnational levels” of Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole, the latter of which has a low status in Jamaica but value in the diaspora (2016: 33). However, whether these claims hold true should at this point be treated as empirical questions rather than as known facts, and such questions motivate studies like mine. It is in such differences between repertoires that the potential for yearning, struggle, and negotiation of identity and authenticity resides. Questions arise. Do Nigerian emigrants aspire to a Nigerian identity “authenticated” (Bucholtz 2003; Section 3.5.1) by the same kind of linguistic behavior as is exhibited in Nigeria? What are the attitudes of diasporic Nigerians toward their heritage languages, on the one hand, and NigP, on the other hand? Do language forms associated with the host society show up as prestigious? Which types of American Englishes are considered most attractive and authentic? The linguistic differences postulated here between Nigerians in the United States and in Nigeria are based on known aspects of the sociolinguistic situation in both locations rather than on an analysis of language data. Hence, they only serve as a starting point for the following empirical exploration. This book focuses particularly on AAVE, which is a variety accessible and relevant to a wholly different degree to Nigerians living in the USA in comparison to those in Nigeria. I will describe the concrete AAVE resources employed by U.S.-Nigerians as well as the metalinguistic discourses surrounding the use of this variety, which could be seen as either authentically local and Black or as inauthentically assimilated and disconnected from roots. In the second empirical chapter, different Nigerian influences in the repertoire are addressed, highlighting again language attitudes and awareness.

chapter 3

Resources, repertoires, and authenticity in times of globalization Globalization has destabilized some long-standing truths in linguistics, such as the idea of languages as bounded entities distributed over space in a way that a certain language or language variety is spoken by a specific group within a delimited geographical area. This conceptualization is reflected, for example, in how languages tend to be named using words for nations and countries. These labels and the underlying conceptualization emerged out of the 18th-century ideal of national languages promoting unified nation-states (Seargeant & Tagg 2011: 497). There was pressure to standardize and codify these languages, and for instance regarding the English language, this process culminated in the 18th century in the publication of several grammars and Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (Milroy & Milroy 1999: 34). This led to the emergence of what Milroy and Milroy (1999) call the “standard language ideology” – the widespread belief that there should be one correct uniform form of language that should be protected and favored. The influence of this prescriptive ideology is visible in the web forum interactions as well and will be addressed in this work. Also in the World Englishes paradigm, it has been common practice to name varieties at the national level and describe them as lists of features. For example, the corpus linguistic method, as represented by the International Corpus of English (Greenbaum 1996) or the Corpus of Global Web-based English (Davies 2013) projects, relies on ascribing speakers and texts to national varieties and thus creating distinct text collections to be compared. Considering, however, how migration and the near-ubiquitization of electronic long-distance communication have set language forms in intense motion and contact in our globalized time, the existence of such pure and distinct varieties can now be criticized on empirical as well as theoretical grounds. Some of these problems along with suggested solutions are addressed in this chapter. It discusses a number of theoretical sociolinguistic contributions relevant to understanding language under the conditions of globalization. As a consequence, language needs to be seen as deterritorialized, as “something which does not belong to one locality but which organizes translocal trajectories and wider spaces” (Blommaert 2010: 46).

 World Englishes on the Web

The implications of this mobility are addressed primarily by adopting Blommaert’s (2010) “sociolinguistics of globalization” approach. Accepting this framework requires taking a critical look at established concepts, such as speech community, repertoire, competence, and even language itself. In the final part of this chapter, the topic of authenticity will be discussed, as it looms large in sociolinguistic investigations of globalization. 3.1  Crossing After sociolinguists ceased to plainly ignore non-native language processes, such as Nigerians using AAVE, such phenomena have usually been discussed under the rubric of “code-switching”, and more precisely, “linguistic crossing” (Rampton 1995, 2000; Rampton & Charalambous 2000). The term was coined by Rampton in an ethnographic study of multiracial youth groups in the British South Midlands in the 1980s. It refers to “the use of a language or variety that feels anomalously ‘other’ for the participants in an activity, involving movement across quite sharply sensed social or ethnic boundaries, in ways that can raise questions of legitimacy” (Rampton & Charalambous 2000: 2). Rampton (1995) examines how Caribbean Creole, Panjabi, and stylized Indian English are used alongside “mainstream” ­British English in interactions with peers and educators in a school setting by Afro-Caribbean, South Asian, and White Anglo pupils. The focus on crossing represents a move away from the 20th-century “linguistics of community” (Pratt 1987: 49), based on “fairly stable local social networks” within idealized nationstates, to a “linguistics of contact” (1987: 60), focused on interactions between social groups (Rampton & ­Charalambous 2000: 2). Rampton’s monograph (1995) focuses on describing the social dynamics of crossing in the particular context and community, but in a later paper (Rampton & Charalambous 2000), a more theoretical overview is provided, including an attempt to distinguish crossing from related concepts. Crossing can be seen as a subtype of “code-switching”, but what sets it apart from other types of “juxtaposition […] of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical systems”, as Gumperz (1982: 59) defines code-switching, is a pronounced feeling of transgression of group boundaries, while code-switching studies tend to focus on fully bilingual communities. Like crossing, “stylization” is characterized by speakers “shift[ing] into varieties or exaggerated styles that are seen as lying beyond their normal range” (­Rampton & Charalambous 2000: 4). Stylization could be considered a higher-level category as well; the two have the fact in common that the audience recognizes the speaker does not “truly, seriously mean or believe in the identity [they are] projecting”



Chapter 3.  Resources, repertoires, and authenticity in times of globalization 

(Rampton 2000: 54). However, Rampton and Charalambous argue that when the adopted style is “saliently associated with an ethnic outgroup”, more grave issues of legitimacy arise (2000: 4). Crossing has great potential for identity work and, therefore, for researching identity work. When a relatively unexpected language code gets used, it usually inserts images of a particular social type into the flow of interaction, and it both instantiates and sparks off heightened displays of the participants’ orientations to one another, to the representations, and to the relationship between them. This in turn reveals a great deal to the analyst about (1) how individuals negotiate their group alignments and (2) how the meanings of group identity are themselves ratified or ­redefined. (Rampton 2000: 55)

Moreover, crossing may constitute the first stage in the process of development of a “multi-ethnic vernacular” (Rampton & Charalambous 2000: 3). If a close language-contact situation – typically between host and immigrant languages – persists long enough, locals may incorporate features from the immigrant language(s) into their thus-emerging multi-ethnic vernacular (e.g., Cheshire et  al. 2011 on London). More extensive conflation of two languages has been termed a “fused lect” by Auer (1999). In such steadier situations of mixture, individual instances of switching cease to be interactionally significant, whereas crossing is always meaningful at the micro level. Crossing occurs particularly in “[m]oments and events where normal social relations are suspended”, such as “greetings and selftalk, […] games, jocular abuse, and musical performance” – in such situations, it might even pass without the debates characteristic of ethnic out-group language use (­Rampton 2000: 54). What is empirically problematic about crossing is the reference to feelings (of otherness) in the definition. Unless an explicit metalinguistic reaction is sparked, an observer cannot know reliably how interactants perceive a code choice. Studies on crossing have focused on face-to-face interactions (Rampton & Charalambous 2000 provide an overview), but in textual multi-party computer-mediated communication, feedback is poorer and scarcer, and even controversial statements may go unchallenged. A possible methodological cure, recognized by Rampton and Charalambous as well (2000: 4), could be to discuss interactions with the users themselves. The alternative is to adopt the viewpoint that any utterance accepted by the audience without reaction does not constitute crossing, but this restricts the application of the term significantly. Moreover, participants’ perceptions of whether a particular communicative act is “anomalous” may differ. Must there be unanimity on the issue? If not, whose interpretation prevails? Rampton later clarifies these aspects: “[p]recisely who it is that experiences this feeling [of anomalous otherness] – whether it’s the speaker,

 World Englishes on the Web

the interlocutor(s), or both – will vary” (2000: 54). Consequently, it suffices that at least any one party perceives an utterance as crossing; hence, it also encompasses instances in which participants disagree about the belonging of an individual to an ethnicity, or of a linguistic resource to a variety. Finally, the evaluation of a situation depends on how people assign themselves and others to ethnic groups, which is often not as straightforward as Rampton (1995) makes it out to be in the community he observes. Ethnic belonging is socially and discursively constructed, partially negotiable, and easily muddled by genetic and social mixing of people. Ethnic allegiances may change over the course of one’s life or even on a momentary basis (Benor 2010: 169). In pseudonymous, text-based CMC, users have fairly limited knowledge of their interlocutors’ ethnicities. Rampton (2009: 292) explains how crossing highlights ethnicity but often with the consequence of, in fact, undermining the idea that it is inborn. Questions of crossing are always delicate questions of identity, belonging, and authenticity. The term would, at first sight, appear to be a great fit to describe Nigerians’ selective usage of African-American linguistic resources. Its applicability, however, will be evaluated in the light of the data in the course of my analysis and discussion. 3.2  The sociolinguistics of globalization This book is inspired by Blommaert’s (2010) “sociolinguistics of globalization”. In his eponymous monograph, Blommaert invites the reader to join him in rethinking the sociolinguistic theoretical toolkit and its applicability to investigating language in our globalized time characterized by increased complexity, interconnectedness, unpredictability, inequality, and mobility. The sociolinguistics of globalization must be a “sociolinguistics of mobile resources”, and Blommaert calls for the development of a critical, dynamic sociolinguistic theory embedded in “cultural, social, political and historical” contexts and changes (2010: 1–2). Thereby, the focus must be on concrete linguistic resources and their movements in space and time, across different “orders of indexicality” – organized layers of judgments about the value of certain linguistic elements over others in particular contexts (Blommaert 2005: 73). This concept brings together Foucault’s ([1970] 1981: 61) “order of discourse” (“procedures which permit the control of discourses”) and ­Silverstein’s (2003: 217) “indexical order” (the culturally and ideologically mediated “orderliness of sociolinguistic variability”). Moving through physical “horizontal space”, therefore, always means moving to a new (metaphorical) “vertical space” of linguistic norms as well (Blommaert 2010: 6). Blommaert (2010: 6) endorses movement metaphors of globalization as “global cultural flows” (Appadurai 1996) or “transcultural flows” (Pennycook



Chapter 3.  Resources, repertoires, and authenticity in times of globalization 

2007), though adds that it is not movement into “empty spaces” but into “someone’s space […] filled with norms, [and] expectations”. Different language resources display differing potential for mobility: some may be utilized across many contexts, whereas others offer their users limited possibilities for making themselves understood and/or gaining prestige (Blommaert 2010: 12). For example, resources belonging to what Spears calls “uncensored speech” would in “censored” contexts be perceived as “obscene or evaluatively negative” and inappropriate (1998: 232). In order to accomplish desired functions in a particular situation – a capability referred to by Blommaert (2005) as having “voice” – an individual needs access either to the specific, locally necessary resources or flexible, prestigious, highly mobile resources. Blommaert uses the metaphor of “scales” to illustrate moves and interactions between “stratified and therefore power-invested” levels of social space (2010: 34). The term stems from World Systems Analysis (Wallerstein 1983), where the capitalist world is divided into prestigious, wealthy centers, and dependent semiperipheries and peripheries (Blommaert, Collins & Slembrouck 2005: 201–202). Blommaert and colleagues (2005: 202) suggest that similar patterns of inequality exist for linguistic and cultural products and that they operate simultaneously at various ordered, interdependent levels (“scales”). The scales form a continuum from the momentary and local to the timeless and global, and they are indexically linked, with specific situations pointing toward more permanent schemes, and being recognized as instances of such (Blommaert 2010: 32–34). Again, there are disparities in how easily individuals or groups move between scales (2010: 36). Blommaert (2010) wants to bring such issues of power and inequality to the center of the sociolinguistic practice and theory. He argues that the power to evaluate communicative acts does not reside in one location or entity but there are always several alternative centers of authority – individuals or institutions – that social actors can orient toward in a particular situation (2010: 39–41). These key concepts of the sociolinguistics of globalization are brought into interaction in the following statement, which reads as a summary of Blommaert’s theory: sociolinguistic phenomena in a globalization context need to be understood as developing at several different scale-levels, where different orders of indexicality dominate, resulting in a polycentric ‘context’ where communicative behaviour is simultaneously pushed and pulled in various directions. (Blommaert 2010: 42)

In an example relevant to the interests of this study, Blommaert (2005: 74–75) explains how using hip-hop slang may simultaneously signal positive affiliation with certain urban African-American youth groups at one indexical level and “non-membership […], marginality and dissent” at the level of the U.S. m ­ ainstream

 World Englishes on the Web

society. Indexicalities and relevant authorities change as one shifts from a subcultural to the state context, and again as one moves to the global level or to a different (trans-)local, such as Nigerian or computer-mediated, one. Many of these ideas were already brought up in a 2005 paper by Blommaert et al., the main focus of which is, however, on how spaces influence and restrict what people can do within them linguistically. The authors are particularly interested in multilingualism and the multilingual competence in space. They argue that linguistic and communicative competence should be treated as situated in a particular time and space, as it encompasses different sets of skills in different situations rather than being an “open-ended potential” for doing things with language (Blommaert, Collins & Slembrouck 2005: 211). Thereby, they emphasize the context-dependency of the value of a language repertoire, as the situation either incapacitates or empowers the language user: “[m]ultilingualism is not what individuals have or lack, but what the environment, as structured determination and interactional emergence, enables and disables them to deploy” (2005: 213). Essentially, Blommaert et al. reinforce the established idea of the significance of the communicative situation. Their basic assumption that “every instance of human communication always has an intrinsic spatiality to it as well as an intrinsic temporality” (2005: 203) must apply to computer-mediated communication too, though concepts of space and time are complicated by technological mediation. In CMC, each user remains firmly located in their physical surrounding, which they may either hide or highlight (Heyd & Honkanen 2015), and additionally, there is the shared, imagined virtual space of the particular online platform. Similarly to other spaces, it has its own “sets of norms and expectations about communicative behavior”, that is, orders of indexicality (Blommaert, Collins & Slembrouck 2005: 203). 3.3  Resources and languages Accepting Blommaert and colleagues’ (2005) views about language in globalization calls for a critical examination of how languages have conventionally been viewed as discrete and bounded systems. It is a fact well known, but often disregarded, that language labels do not correspond to empirically real, separate entities but are conventional and normative abstractions molded by ideological, historical, and political factors. As Swann puts it, [h]owever we describe languages, it’s worth bearing in mind that the idea of distinct varieties is itself an idealization. It is not possible to draw neat boundaries that delimit English. There is no obvious cut-off point beyond which we can say that variability and change within English have given rise to new languages. In



Chapter 3.  Resources, repertoires, and authenticity in times of globalization 

practice, even what counts as an identifiable, distinct variety of English (e.g. Indian English or Geordie), or what distinguishes English from another language (e.g. from Tok Pisin or Scots), is likely to be decided on social and political grounds rather than according to purely linguistic criteria. (Swann 2007: 11)

Recently, scholars have started demanding that sociolinguistic theorizing demonstrate a more pronounced awareness of this idealized nature of languages (e.g., Makoni & Pennycook 2007; Møller & Jørgensen 2009; Seargeant & Tagg 2011). The same criticism applies to “variety”. Seargeant and Tagg (2011: 498–499) explain how acknowledging the plurality of English(es) in the World Englishes framework since the late 1970s served the important function of legitimizing different usages globally but also established another problematic term – “variety” as “a recognisable system of linguistic features which can be associated with a community of speakers”. Approaches relying on these concepts tend to neglect internal variation (Seargeant & Tagg 2011: 498). For example, in Kachru’s (1985) influential model of the “three concentric circles of World Englishes”, boundaries of varieties overlap with state borders, and differences within each state are largely ignored. In the Nigerian context, Akande (2012: 1) points out how the label “Nigerian English” suggests uniformity which research shows to not exist. Seargeant and Tagg (2011: 497) argue that viewing languages and varieties as delimited entities belonging to specific geographically definable national communities is outdated as a description of linguistic as well as social realities, particularly on the internet and considering the globalization and diversification of English. Instead, they suggest a “post-varieties approach”, where the focus is on how “English-related forms and connotations [are used] as one part of a wider semiotic repertoire” (2011: 498) in their study of private CMC within a globally dispersed group of Thai friends. Their treatment is reminiscent of Blommaert’s (2010) resource-based approach, in which the target of investigation is how people use specific pieces of language, and the mobility of these pieces. “[E]ven if such resources can be conventionally tagged as ‘belonging’ to language X or Y, it is good to remember that the whole point is about the dislodging of such resources from their conventional origins” (2010: 43). All in all, I agree with Hinrichs (2011: 5), who suggests that linguists may retain “variety” and “language” as useful theoretical constructs as long as we keep in mind that they are just that. My orientation toward resources rather than languages is visible, for instance, in the primary goal being not to describe how much the relevant codes are used but which resources and how. A host of further terms rely on the concept of distinct languages, including “mother tongue”, “borrowing”, “code-switching”, and “multilingualism”. ­Blommaert suggests that language practices in globalization are captured better

 World Englishes on the Web

using ­ethnographic vocabulary – “voice” rather than “language”, or “heteroglossia” rather than “multilingualism” (2010: 180–181), “heteroglossia” going back to the Russian literary theorist Bakhtin ([1934] 1981). Many scholars, mainly from applied and sociolinguistics, have not settled for existing nomenclature but suggested new terms for describing the concurrent usage of resources associated with different languages. These include “transidiomatic practices” (Jacquemet 2005), “code-meshing” (Canagarajah 2006), “poly-lingualism” (Møller & Jørgensen 2009), “translanguaging” (García 2009b), “metrolingualism” (Otsuji & Pennycook 2010), and “polylanguaging” (Jørgensen et al. 2011), with relatively minor meaning differences. The totality of resources of an individual or a group has also often been called their “repertoire”. 3.4  Repertoires The general meaning of “repertoire”, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), is “a stock or range of regularly performed or easily exhibited skills, techniques, abilities, etc.; a collection of typical features” (OED Online 2019m). Central in establishing “repertoire” as a sociolinguistic concept, Gumperz first described the “verbal repertoire” as “all the accepted ways of formulating messages” within a particular “speech community”, defined, in turn, as “any human aggregate characterized by regular and frequent interaction over a significant span of time and set off from other such aggregates by differences in the frequency of interaction” (1964: 137–138). For Gumperz, repertoires are community-level phenomena, described by recounting which linguistic code is used in which communicative context, and listing concrete features that distinguish such codes. However, the main problem with Gumperz’s account is its heavy reliance on the concept of “speech community”, which, in its original form, has fallen out of favor in sociolinguistics (e.g., Tagg 2015: 231). Gumperzian speech communities are typically homogeneous, isolated groups in which shared norms are assumed in processes of early socialization, such as the Indian agricultural village and the remote Norwegian settlement of his case studies. Globally dispersed virtual communities do not easily fit the same mold. The increased diversification within societies, along with other phenomena of globalization, has, in fact, led some scholars to abandoning community as a unit of analysis in favor of individual repertoires (Tagg 2015: 231–233). Sharma (2011: 486) suggests that exploring individual “style repertoires” may “reveal evidence of systematic changes in social structure” and represent “the ability and range of individuals, as well as the social indexicality of given dialect traits” better



Chapter 3.  Resources, repertoires, and authenticity in times of globalization 

than traditional variationist quantification. Her research investigates Punjabi in West London and generational and gendered differences in the usage of British and Indian English phonological features depending on the addressee. After comparing findings from 24 sociolinguistic interviews with four case studies, Sharma (2011: 487) endorses the analysis of individual “repertoire ‘portraits’”. Blommaert (2010: 102) also stresses individual repertoires, which he sees as consisting of concrete pieces of “accents, language varieties, registers, genres, modalities”. In describing the role of a particular language in an individual repertoire, Blommaert makes distinctions between domains such as oral versus literal, vernacular versus standard, informal versus formal, and production versus reception (2010: 103; Blommaert & Backus 2012: 18). These seem to him to be the facets of a repertoire that enable descriptions at a level more general than that of individual resources. Since my data stem from a single communicative context, this type of analysis is unfeasible based on them. Blommaert’s perhaps most valuable addition to our understanding of repertoires is the observation that individual repertoires, whether mono- or multilingual, are necessarily partial, “truncated”, as no-one has command of all the resources and registers of any language (2010: 103). Fragmented, repertoires reflect individual biographies, constantly undergoing changes as resources are learned, forgotten, or abandoned (2010: 103). Blommaert and Backus (2012: 3) bring “repertoire” into dialogue with “competence”, suggesting that “[w]henever ‘repertoire’ is used, it presupposes knowledge  – ‘competence’  – because ‘having’ a particular repertoire is predicated on knowing how to use the resources that it combines”. Essentially, “repertoire” and “competence” become synonymous, as the scholars define the latter as an “inventory of linguistic resources”, gathered from formal and informal learning processes across the lifespan (2012: 7). Recently, in an attempt to apply “repertoire” again to collective patterns of language use, Benor (2010) developed a promising theoretical construct for describing language use by ethnic groups: the “ethnolinguistic repertoire”. The term intends to replace older labels “ethnolect” or “ethnic variety”, with the merit that it allows for variation across speakers and speech situations as well as for nonmembers of an ethnic group to adopt elements from the group’s repertoire. Benor defines the “ethnolinguistic repertoire” as a “fluid set of linguistic resources that members of an ethnic group may use variably as they index their ethnic identities” (2010: 160). This fluidity enables a selective and intentional as well as subconscious construction of ethnic identities through language. The constructivist view of ethnicity entails that language does not merely reflect membership in an ethnic category but that group membership, and even the group itself, are actually spoken into existence and negotiated largely through language (2010: 160).

 World Englishes on the Web

An advantage of Benor’s approach to ethnic language use is that it enables examining any usage – no matter how minimal – of features associated with an ethnicity, irrespective of whether the speaker sees themselves as a representative of the ethnicity or not9 (2010: 164). Moreover, the approach disposes of the need to classify intra-speaker variation as code-switching between varieties (2010: 162). In both cases, the researcher avoids the difficulty of having to decide how many features must be present for a speaker to be labeled as a member of group X, or a string of discourse as an instance of variety Y. According to Benor (2010: 168), “[r]ather than asking if the speaker is using the ethnolect”, the researcher’s task is to see “which features of the repertoire he [or she] is using and why”. Access to language resources and identity aspirations were mentioned as two factors shaping an individual’s repertoire. Both figure importantly in Le Page and Tabouret-Keller’s (1985) classic work on “acts of identity”, which explores how concepts such as “language”, “ethnicity”, or “community” are created and maintained through repeated “acts of identity” – choosing to employ linguistic forms associated with those social group(s) one wants to be seen as a member of at the moment and to avoid forms related to groups one does not want to belong to (1985: 181). The scholars see the “motivation to identify with groups” as “by far the most important of the constraints governing linguistic behaviour” (1985: 184). However, to be able to imitate a group, one needs “adequate access” to it, in order to become aware of it as distinct and observe its linguistic practices closely enough to reproduce them (1985: 182). Le Page and Tabouret-Keller’s ideas are based on several decades of anthropological and linguistic research in former British and French colonies. Their 1985 monograph analyzes children’s storytelling and interview data from Belize and St. Lucia. They also draw on data Le Page collected with Sebba on the usage of “London Jamaican English” by children of West Indian heritage in London (Sebba & Le Page 1983). These ideas are pertinent particularly in immigrant contexts, where multiple ethnic and national identity labels are potentially available to individuals. This is the case to the extreme in the then-freshly independent ex-colonies where Le Page and Tabouret-Keller conducted their research; for example in Belize, relevant identity labels include “Spanish”, “Carib”, “Maya”, “Kekchi”, “Waika”, “Lebanese”, “Creole”, as well as “Belizean” (1985: 117).

.  Benor points out that one’s perception of one’s ethnicity may change, or one may orient toward several groups alternatingly or simultaneously (2010: 169). This observation might pertain particularly to young, mixed-ethnicity, or second-generation Black immigrants in the United States who may want to claim African-American identities.



Chapter 3.  Resources, repertoires, and authenticity in times of globalization 

Whereas the acts-of-identity model would seem to suggest that U.S-Nigerians employ AAVE when they want to be seen as African Americans, Benor’s ethnolinguistic repertoire (2010) offers an alternate view of the use of “out-group” ethnic resources. Relying on Ochs’s (1992), Silverstein’s (2003), and Eckert’s (2008a, 2008b) ideas about the indexicality of language, Benor (2010: 168) argues it is not necessary to assume that, for instance, using AAVE resources amounts to claiming an African-American identity because, rather than directly signaling ethnic membership, language forms are linked to ethnicities “through the mediating level of stances, activities, and personae associated with” ethnic identities. Benor borrows Ochs’s ideas about indexing gender here: Ochs suggests that few linguistic features index gender directly, but the construction of gender is usually accomplished through mediating “stances, social acts, social activities, and other social constructs” (1992: 337). Already before Benor, Eckert (2008b: 26) had applied this to ethnicity, explaining how “linguistic resources […] that appear to be specifically ethnic can index far more than ethnicity”, through “associations with some apparent quality – some aspect of a stereotype – of that category”. Therefore, examining the stereotypes U.S.-Nigerians hold about African Americans can help to understand the indexical potential of AAVE within this group. Eckert calls the different possible social meanings of a form its “indexical field”: “a constellation of ideologically related meanings, any one of which can be activated in the situated use of the variable” (2008a: 454). For instance, taking up resources related to AAVE could mean wanting to claim “realness, toughness, and participation in the hip hop scene” (Benor 2010: 168). At this point, Benor’s (2010) ethnolinguistic repertoire can be compared to Rampton’s (1995) crossing. Benor says her approach is apt to deal with “crossing in the context of playful banter in multi-ethnic friendship groups” and other instances of “non-group members us[ing] elements of the group’s ethnolect” (2010: 168). The idea that the use of ethnic resources is often motivated by the desire to take up particular “stances, activities, and personae” related to the ethnicity (2010: 168) implies that harnessing resources from other social groups is a perfectly normal linguistic activity that need not spark particular debates of legitimacy, seen as key symptoms of crossing. Benor might also criticize Rampton for slight insensitivity toward the discursively constructed nature of ethnicity. The repertoire approach (Benor 2010: 168–169) seems better suited for handling the “porous and fluid” ethnic categories and “shifting ethnic identifications” of our globalized time. However, the ethnolinguistic repertoire is intended as a theoretical aid for sociolinguists describing ethnic language use, while crossing takes the emic viewpoint of the participants themselves. Whereas Benor is interested in “distinctive linguistic features” that operate partly below consciousness to separate groups (2010: 160), Rampton’s (1995, 2000) focus is on speaker perceptions and reactions.

 World Englishes on the Web

Indeed, whether employing resources across ethnic boundaries is perceived as a problem of authenticity and legitimacy, as suggested by Rampton (1995, 2000), or as run-of-the-mill identity work, as implied by Benor (2010), could be posited as an empirical question. The ethnolinguistic repertoire is an attractive tool for describing Nigerians’ forays into using AAVE, but it might have another application in the context of this project as well. Heyd and Mair (2014) suggest that the aggregate of language use on the Nigerian web forum can be viewed as a “digital ethnolinguistic repertoire”. Basing her study on empirical work in contemporary United States, Benor in fact maintains that the concept of ethnolinguistic repertoire is “most likely not generalizable to situations where ethnic boundaries are maintained through the use of unrelated languages” (2010: 176). However, I see no contradiction in the idea that the “fluid set of linguistic resources” group members “use variably” to mark their identity (2010: 160) could be multilingual. Heyd and Mair’s observation that the Nigerian forum hosts “users of a repertoire of features – not members of a uniform speech community” (2014: 252) speaks well to the evident diversity of styles, competences, and preferences. In such “digital” repertoires, the phonetic element of language is replaced by an orthographic-typographic-visual one (2014: 251). The situation is complicated by the fact that “Nigerian” is, in fact, usually not considered an ethnicity at all. Nigeria is a primarily geopolitical unit that holds within its borders hundreds of groups that perceive themselves as distinct. Imoagene (2017: 100), however, suggests that “Nigerian” may be viewed as an ethnicity in the diaspora. Either way, identity as Nigerian seems to be relevant to many forum members, though perhaps secondary to ethnic identity or salient mainly in contrast to other nationalities. This means that the Nigerian ethnolinguistic repertoire may have to accommodate all the ethnic languages spoken in Nigeria, of which most Nigerians master at most a few. However, the concept seems to allow for this type of flexibility. Although Heyd and Mair’s (2014) idea of applying the analytical concept of the ethnolinguistic repertoire to Nigerian CMC is appealing, I depart from their approach in one notable respect. Heyd and Mair seem to suggest that the Nigerian digital repertoire consists of all language resources used on the forum (2014: 250–251). However, keeping in mind Benor’s definition of the ethnolinguistic repertoire as those linguistic elements that may be used for “index[ing]” specific “ethnic identities”, I propose that the Nigerian digital ethnolinguistic repertoire encompasses only those resources that Nigerians themselves see as indexing (authentic) Nigerianness in the online context. Resources not associated with being Nigerian are certainly also employed – those constitute the individual repertoires of ­Nigerian language users but do not belong to the Nigerian ethnolinguistic



Chapter 3.  Resources, repertoires, and authenticity in times of globalization 

repertoire. The composition of this repertoire is an empirical question this study begins to answer. In sum, repertoire is seen as a relevant concept both at the individual level (the truncated repertoire in Blommaert 2005, 2010; Blommaert & Backus 2012) and at the macro level of the community of practice and/or cultural group (the digital ethnolinguistic repertoire in Benor 2010; Heyd & Mair 2014). From the perspective of repertoires, my research questions could be formulated thus: What components does the Nigerian digital ethnolinguistic repertoire consist of? Are AAVE resources accepted as part of the Nigerian repertoire, or is their usage accompanied by a prevailing sense of transgression of ethnic and cultural boundaries? Are U.S.-Nigerians expected to participate in the Nigerian ethnolinguistic repertoire, or is there a separate U.S.-Nigerian repertoire? How do diasporic Nigerian repertoires differ from the Nigerian model? 3.5  Authenticity Authenticity has been identified as a much-sought-after, yet problematic, quality with relevance to physical objects and products (e.g., Ewing, Allen & Ewing 2012), art and other cultural products (e.g., Pennycook 2007: chapter 6), experiences (e.g., Scannell 2001) and emotions (e.g., Salmela 2014), as well as social belonging (e.g., Shenk 2007; Blommaert & Varis 2013; Kytölä & Westinen 2015), and language use (e.g., Coupland 2001, 2003, 2014; Montgomery 2001; van Leeuwen 2001; Gill 2011). Focusing on the domains of language and (national, ethnic, cultural) identity, this section will discuss the recent key scholarly treatments and understandings of authenticity. The aim is to view how aspirations of authenticity may shape diasporic Nigerians’ computer-mediated heteroglossic practices. 3.5.1  Language and authenticity The phrase “authentic language” has taken up many different senses and definitions. Montgomery (2001) suggests three ways in which authenticity can be experienced in talk: First there is talk that is deemed authentic because it does not sound contrived, simulated or performed but rather sounds natural, ‘fresh’, spontaneous. Second there is talk that is deemed authentic because it seems truly to capture or present the experience of the speaker. Third, there is authentic talk that seems truly to project the core self of the speaker – talk that is true to the self of the speaker in an existential fashion. We thus have: (1) talk that projects itself as nothing more or less than talk itself; (2) talk that is true to the event/experience; and (3) talk that is true to the self/person. (Montgomery 2001: 403–404)

 World Englishes on the Web

Montgomery takes the term “fresh talk” from Goffman’s (1981) decomposition of “speaker” into “animator”, “author”, and “principal” – roles that may all be performed by the same, or each by a different, agent in a certain speech situation. The animator produces the sounds understood as talk after the author has formulated the wording of the ideas the principal wants to convey to the hearer(s) (Goffman 1981: 226). In fresh talk, the three roles coalesce in one person, and the resulting speech is not recited from memory or read off a script but produced spontaneously on the spot (1981: 227). Montgomery’s account is appealing though probably does not cover all possible ways in which authenticity could be at stake in language, as, for example, Coupland’s typology contains six “ways in which language can be and has been associated with authenticity” (2014: 21), shown as Table 1. Table 1.  A typology of sociolinguistic authenticities (Coupland 2001: 415) Authentic language 1

attested and attestable language

Authentic language 2

naturally occurring language

Authentic language 3

language that encodes fact and truth

Authentic language 4

fully owned, unmediated language

Authentic language 5

language expressing personal authenticity

Authentic language 6

language expressing authentic cultural membership

The first two types describe the basic requirement usually set for sociolinguistic data as language arising in real communicative situations rather than in experiments or as linguists’ or pedagogs’ concoctions (Coupland 2001: 415, criticism in 2014: 22). All language produced on the Nigerian web forum is authentic in this sense. Coupland’s level 3 authenticity is achieved when an utterance is not knowingly untruthful and counterfactual but “transparently reproduce[s the speaker’s] real thoughts and opinions” (2001: 415). This level is violated, for example, in trolling (Hardaker 2013) and other forms of online deception (Donath 1999). A “troller” enters an online community or interaction “conveying ostensibly sincere intentions” but with the hidden goal of creating “disruption and/or […] conflict”, often by means of “false identities, disingenuous intentions, and outright lies” (Hardaker 2013: 61, 82). Deception can also take less malicious forms of identity concealment, impersonation, or category deception, such as claiming a different biological age or sex (Donath 1999). The pseudonymous, mainly text-based and disembodied nature of technologically-mediated long-distance communication enables the making of false statements, such as about one’s appearance, that would quickly be challenged in



Chapter 3.  Resources, repertoires, and authenticity in times of globalization 

face-to-face interactions. Some untruthful communication undoubtedly occurs on any web platform, and this is probably the level of authenticity the interactants themselves are most keenly aware and wary of. However, in addition to being difficult to identify, deceptive inauthenticity is not the most interesting type from a linguistic perspective, and in view of my research questions, is not focused upon (see, however, Table 20). Coupland’s authenticity of type 4 refers to speaking for oneself, and being “fully responsible for the forms and meanings (pragmatic as well as semantic) of [one’s] utterances” (2003: 423). Here, Coupland, too, applies Goffman’s (1981: 226) framework about speaker roles, suggesting that authentic speech occurs when the roles of principal (whose opinions are expressed), author (who puts the thoughts into words), and animator (who utters the words) overlap so that a person presents their own thoughts in their own words. Note that Goffman’s (1981) ideas pertain to spoken language, and written CMC, by definition, fails to bring to the audience the animated, “unmediated”, authentic voice (in the physical sense) of a person (Coupland 2001: 415; see also Coulmas 2014 on written vs spoken authenticity). Hence, the definition of the animator needs to be revised if it is to be relevant. Its equivalent in web forum interactions could be the account/username associated with an online persona. If an account is hacked or otherwise taken over by a third party, its authenticity becomes compromised in the sense that the source from whence the words seem to stem is not their genuine origin; whether the audience suspects anything depends on the impersonator’s behavior and how well the parties know each other. With regard to principal- and authorship, it may be mentioned that forum members tend to communicate as private persons rather than represent any institution, so the question of posters “owning”, or not, the thoughts and formulations in their messages mainly arises in the case of quotations. Users may include in their posts material from outside sources, such as song lyrics or articles from online newspapers – see Section 6.2.5. However, since this is mostly done openly, it does not threaten the overall impression of people as free agents, writing authentically for themselves (for an exception, see Example 22). As a final point about Coupland’s (2001) level 4 of authenticity, I shall briefly relate his ideas to Bakhtin’s concept of “double-voicing”. This is a situation in which “speakers/writers use someone else’s discourse (or language) for their own purposes” (Bakhtin [1929] 1984: 189; paraphrased in Rampton 1995: 222), in a way that it is “perceived as belonging to someone else” (Bakhtin [1929] 1984: 189). As a consequence, “[i]n one discourse, two semantic intentions appear, two voices” ([1929] 1984: 189). The term can be applied in the context of ethnic language use, as Rampton (1995) does with crossing, to explain instances of using resources associated with an ethnic out-group as intentionally speaking or writing in ­someone

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else’s voice. This is in conflict with Coupland’s (2001: 415) authenticity type 6, discussed below, but I suggest it can be related to type 4 – “fully owned, unmediated language” – as well, when one considers instances of performing a specific person or persona as double-voicing. This will be elaborated on in Chapter 8. Coupland does not add much detail to his concept of “personal authenticity” – the target of authentic language 5 – apart from referring to the “lay” expression of people “be[ing] themselves” (2001: 415). In Coupland (2003: 424), he implies that authenticity in this sense is perceived as “integrity” and being “trustworthy, honest and straightforward”. However, in then pointing out that these characteristics are often thought to be more present in the speakers of certain varieties than others, Coupland is already taking the issue to a group and cultural level, blurring the line between authenticity types 5 (“personal”) and 6 (“cultural membership”). The same trend is even stronger in his later treatment (Coupland 2014), in which the two are discussed together, without definitions that would go beyond the labels. Coupland’s vagueness is symptomatic of the complex nature of the issue. The imperative of being oneself has an anti-performative and anti-constructivist ring to it. In discussing online identities in virtual worlds, Turkle (1995) emphasizes play, self-expression, and experimentation, presenting numerous cases in which a person’s online personae differ in important ways from their offline persona(e), with interesting implications: Traditional ideas about identity have been tied to a notion of authenticity that such virtual experiences actively subvert. When each player can create many characters and participate in many games, the self is not only decentered but multiplied without limit. Sometimes such experiences can facilitate self-knowledge and personal growth, and sometimes not. (Turkle 1995: 185)

Even though such tendencies are more prominent in those CMC modes that encourage the creation of characters/avatars and/or have identity play as one main activity, they are certainly present to an extent on web forums, too. Identity play may be observed, for example, in rap battles, in which users take up hip-hop identities and modify their linguistic output to suit the occasion (Section 6.2.2.1), or when one U.S.-Nigerian, when challenged about his use of AAVE, assures that he does not “talk like that in person though” (B in Table 34). My data range from highly stylized to “mundane performances”, the latter of which are performed only in the sense that “speakers design their talk in the awareness – at some level of consciousness and with some level of autonomous control – of alternative possibilities and of likely outcomes” (Coupland 2007: 146). Finally, the most “ambitious and controversial” (Coupland 2001: 421) search for authenticity in language views language as an index of “authentic cultural membership”. This is also the level most relevant to this project. In his first paper



Chapter 3.  Resources, repertoires, and authenticity in times of globalization 

on the topic, Coupland (2001: 416) talks about “language users […] present[ing] themselves as culturally authentic, in specified domains”, such as representatives of certain ethnicities or nationalities. However, soon after, he seems to have come to the conclusion that cultural authenticity occurs, or fails to occur, at the level of the community: authentic language 6 “gives us potential differentiation among speech communities on the basis of their ‘cultural authenticity’” (Coupland 2003: 424). This, however, sounds like fairly dangerous discourse, and in fact, Coupland himself goes on to warn us about essentialism, where “the attributes and behavior of socially defined groups” are seen as being “determined and explained by reference to cultural and/or biological characteristics believed to be inherent to the group” (Bucholtz 2003: 400). Before exploring how cultural authenticity may best be approached in diasporic and computer-mediated contexts, I will discuss how recent treatments of authenticity in sociolinguistics – of which Coupland (2001, 2003, 2014) is a prominent representative – have succeeded in eschewing the risks of essentialism. This is done as part of an overview of authenticity in the sociolinguistic theory over time. In a Journal of Sociolinguistics special issue on “Sociolinguistics and Authenticity”, Eckert (2003) identifies authenticity as an “elephant in the room” – an obvious problem left unaddressed – in sociolinguistics, referring to how most of the earlier work in (variationist) sociolinguistics did not include any overt discussion of authenticity, although the chosen methodologies implied a certain understanding of it. The special issue (Eckert 2003; Bucholtz 2003; Coupland 2003), along with another by Discourse Studies on “Authenticity in Media Discourse” (Thornborrow & van Leeuwen 2001), opened the floor for discussing authenticity, and since then, there has been an increase in papers tackling this complex and elusive issue (e.g., ZAA special issue on “Authenticity in creole-speaking contexts” by Lacoste & Mair 2012; Lacoste, Leimgruber & Breyer 2014; Discourse, Context & Media special issue on “Authenticity, normativity and social media” by Leppänen, Møller & Nørreby 2015). The inclusion and critical examination of authenticity as part of sociolinguistic theoretical frameworks has taken place together with a larger paradigm shift from traditional “first-wave” sociolinguistics to the “third wave” in the 21st century (Eckert 2012). The first wave refers to classic quantitative variationist studies launched in the 1960s by Labov (e.g., Labov 1966) which seek correlations between language forms and allegedly objective sociodemographic categories, such as age, gender, socioeconomic class, or ethnicity, with the ultimate goal of understanding language change in society (Eckert 2012: 88–90). Such studies rely on the sociolinguistic interview as a method for eliciting unreflected “vernacular” (Labov 1972b) speech from informants placed in the above-listed macro-­categories by the researcher (Eckert 2012: 88). The “vernacular” is the speaker’s “most ­spontaneous” way of speaking

 World Englishes on the Web

“in which the minimum attention is paid to speech” (Labov 1972b: 112). The first variationist studies seemed to expect language use to passively reflect membership in social categories, and intra-speaker variation was explained as different “styles” depending on “the amount of attention paid to speech” (1972b: 112). The implication is that linguistic awareness and control over one’s speech make it less natural and authentic. Styleshifting and stylization were discarded as less authentic and less worthy of attention (Coupland 2007: 182). Moreover, the choice of informants in these early studies  – reminiscent of the dialectological predilection for “non-mobile, older, rural males” (Chambers & Trudgill 1998)  – shows an underlying understanding of who the authentic speakers who produce the authentic vernacular are. Eckert describes this implied “authentic speaker”, whose production of spontaneous vernacular is “untainted by the interference of reflection or social agency” (2003: 392), the way he10 was “imagined” in the sociolinguistic tradition (Androutsopoulos 2015: 74). For example, Labov (1972a: xiii) extols consistency and reveals his narrow view of the best speakers when he defines AAVE as “that relatively uniform grammar found in its most consistent form in the speech of black youth from 8 to 19 years old who participate fully in the street culture of the inner cities”. This view is problematic because it suggests that authenticity resides, passively and inherently, in certain types of speakers or language. One reason to dispute the value of such a view of authenticity is that it is highly questionable whether such spontaneous speech by monoglots cut off from influence outside their immediate community occurs to any degree that would justify placing it in this privileged position of normalcy as if it were the only worthwhile target of sociolinguistics. This type of language use would rather seem to be the exception than the rule in our 21st-century, increasingly mobile, interconnected, and mediatized world. Bestowing the highest value to monolingual face-to-face discourses in isolated communities is simply not a realistic starting point for explaining what communication in our contemporary societies is about. The “second wave” of variation studies combined quantification with ethnographic understandings of local contexts, but membership in the local categories was still seen as a given and a determinant of linguistic behavior (Eckert 2012: 93). A new awareness of, and critical attention to, authenticity has been won simultaneously with a general shift in sociolinguistics to focusing, instead of fixed social categories and linguistic varieties, on “stylistic practice” relying on linguistic forms whose indexical meanings vary across contexts and change over time (2012: 94). This new approach questions the meaningfulness of questions such as “What is

.  One of the characteristics of this idealized authentic speaker was maleness, seen, for example, in how young men were favored as informants on AAVE (Eckert 2003: 393).



Chapter 3.  Resources, repertoires, and authenticity in times of globalization 

authentic?” or “Is this authentic?”, arguing that authenticity should not and cannot be seen as an inherent quality. Instead, the late-modern, constructivist approach sees authenticity as an outcome of activities and negotiations among participants in particular situations (e.g., Bucholtz 2003; Lacoste & Mair 2012; Androutsopoulos 2015). Authenticity is thus context-dependent, emergent in discourses and practices  – not had, but pursued and claimed for oneself, and either bestowed or denied by others. Consequently, Bucholtz (2003: 408) suggests that, rather than authenticity, the target of inquiry should be processes of “authentication” or “authenticity effects” created in interaction. This is also the view adopted in this project. The earlier essentialist ideas of authenticity would have put such consciously crafted, stylized, written, mediated, non-native, immigrant language use to the margins of sociolinguistics (even more so in the case of other fields of linguistics), and practically discarded it immediately as inauthentic. However, a constructivist approach to authenticity as authentication (Bucholtz 2003) allows us to explore what is considered acceptable and genuine (Nigerian) language use in this context. I believe that looking at such linguistic practices – in many ways emblematic of our late-modern globalized time – provides valuable insight into what happens when language resources are uprooted from their communities of origin and utilized for identity work in new contexts. To avoid essentialism in examining how U.S.-Nigerians employ African-American resources in their intra-Nigerian web discussions, comparing their usage to the AAVE spoken in the streets and homes of dense African-American communities is not the most productive approach from the point of view of authenticity. Admittedly, this is done occasionally, but not with the intention of arguing that these Nigerians’ language is inauthentically African-American, AAVE, or Nigerian. Rejecting essentialism encompasses legitimizing out-group usage and focusing on the individual agency as well as the reception of resources in new contexts of usage. With this in mind, I aim to discover what kind of AAVE usage, and under what conditions, is accepted by the Nigerian online community as compatible with Nigerian identities, and to follow the negotiation processes that accompany AAVE resources. In addition to examining what type of linguistic practice is accepted as authentic on the forum, I will address the topic of authentication of ethnic/national/ cultural identities. The next sections discuss some key categories of cultural membership as well as take a look at factors that may play a role in authenticating such identities in diasporic CMC. 3.5.2  Doing authentic Nigerianness 3.5.2.1  Key concepts of cultural membership When considering authentic language behavior as one that expresses “authentic cultural membership” (Coupland 2001: 416), relevant cultural categories include,

 World Englishes on the Web

at least, nationality (Nigerian, U.S.-American, etc.), ethnicity (e.g., Igbo, Hausa, African American, etc.), and race (Black, White, etc.). “Nationality” has two distinct denotations, the more usual one being “the status of being a citizen or subject of a particular state” (OED Online 2019i), essentially synonymous with “citizenship”.11 The other usage relies on the concept of a “nation” as a “large aggregate of communities and individuals united by factors such as common descent, language, culture, history, or occupation of the same territory, so as to form a distinct people” (OED Online 2019h). In this sense, “nationality” comes very close to “ethnicity”, as co-ethnics may be said to share a distinct “collective identity […] based on some combination of shared history, language, religion, or culture” (Spears 2014b: 27). Whereas nationality as a legal matter can be verified fairly straightforwardly, judgments of ethnic belonging have more potential for being contested or disagreed upon. The bases for assigning self and others to certain ethnicities are not only historical but also social and psychological. As Fishman (1977) observes, ethnicity is seen as part biologically inherited, part learned. Hence, it is partly subjective and negotiable. Wolfram and Schilling-Estes suggest that self-perception is often the most significant factor in determining one’s ethnicity (2006: 190). Nigerians seem to prefer the term “tribe”, defined in the OED Online (2019o) as a “group of people forming a community and claiming descent from a common ancestor”, but the difference between “tribe” and “ethnic group” seems to be at most connotational (Lewin 2013). Tribalism, as a strong loyalty to – and preference for – one’s own ethnic group, is recognized as a pervasive phenomenon in Nigeria; “tribalism” appears in over 17,700 posts on the Nigerian forum, while “tribalist(s)” occurs 10,100 and “tribalistic” 9,000 times. These are negatively connoted words in the Nigerian context, as favoritism is oftentimes perceived as a threat to national unity. Ideas of citizenship, nationality, and ethnicity come together in the concept of a “nation-state”, which is an “independent political state formed from a people who share a common national identity (historically, culturally, or ethnically)” (OED Online 2019j). The Federal Republic of Nigeria is, importantly, not a nationstate: its formation was not motivated by a shared identity, but the borders were drawn by the British colonizers, creating “a new political entity without a common history or common tradition” (Davis & Kalu-Nwiwu 2001: 2). A multiplicity

.  The United States makes a technical distinction between U.S. nationals and U.S. citizens, the former including all citizens as well as individuals born in American Samoa or the Northern Mariana Islands, who do not automatically have a U.S. citizenship (Internal Revenue Service 2017).



Chapter 3.  Resources, repertoires, and authenticity in times of globalization 

of ethnic boundaries cuts across the political unit of Nigeria, with hundreds of groupings perceiving themselves as separate. Recounting the challenges of nationbuilding in such a situation, Davis and Kalu-Nwiwu (2001: 5) quote the Yoruba statesman Obafemi Awolowo stating in 1947 that “Nigeria is not a nation” but “a mere geographical expression”, and “[t]here are no ‘Nigerians’ in the same sense as there are ‘English’ or ‘Welsh’ or ‘French’” (Awolowo 1960: 27). Based on interactions on the Nigerian forum, it seems that half a century after the establishment of an independent Nigeria, many still predominantly identify with their ethnic group rather than with the Nigerian nation – although there are also nationalists who emphasize pan-Nigerian identities and interests. In Imoagene’s (2017) interviews with second-generation Nigerians in the USA and Britain, ethnic identities hardly come up. This might suggest a dramatically decreased significance of ethnic affiliation after the first generation. Instead, interestingly, Imoagene suggests that in the diaspora, “Nigerian” may become an ethnic identity (2017: 111). These observations are also intended to raise awareness for the fact that, even though this work deals with the construction of diasporic Nigerian identities, not all Nigerian citizens, ex-citizens, or their descendants identify as Nigerians without reservations, or at all.12 Some see themselves primarily as representatives of their ethnic group, while others assume yet another identity, for example as an American. Fifty-two percent of Nigerian-born immigrants in the United States between 2009–2013 had been naturalized as U.S. citizens (Migration Policy Institute 2015: 2), many opting for a dual citizenship. Many “narratives of belonging” (Heyd 2016) produced on the web forum contain hierarchically-layered or multiple identities and affiliations. A person may call himself “a Christian Yoruba from Ekiti” on one occasion and “Nigerian American” on another, or another may state “I am very much Nigerian, I am also very much American and very proud of being both”, without any sense of contradiction; for a discussion of a related data sample, see Table 16. If closer inspection reveals ethnicity and nationality to be complicated and contested issues (Fishman 1977; Giles 1977), it practically strips race of any justification or meaning. As Spears (2014b: 28–31) points out, race is an unscientific social construct “based partially on physical traits”, and that racial categories “overlap and vary from society to society” because they are not biologically grounded but have been formed by historical and political conditions. The artificialness of

.  In this respect, in fact, indiscriminately calling the forum members Nigerians is an etic label. With that, I do not intend to signal any prescriptive view of who these people are or how they should see themselves. It is merely a convenient way of referring to all those who might be considered Nigerian.

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maintaining Black and White as separate categories becomes obvious when one considers how skin color and other physical features associated with race form continua, or how many people who look stereotypically White are classified as Black due to the infamous, illogical one-drop rule that dictates that anyone with an ancestor categorized as Black must also be categorized so (Spears 2014b: 29). The concept of race cannot be separated from the history of racism, and Spears even suggests that “[o]ne of the key functions of racial hierarchy in the U.S. history has been to provide whites without wealth the psychological compensation of knowing that there are lower-ranked racial groups to whom they can feel superior” (2014a: 31). Despite not being biologically real, race is still for many a psychologically real and socially consequential category that cannot be ignored in any discussion of identity or social order in the U.S.-American context. Race figures as a factor in a few extracts (Example 11, B in Table 14, Table 25), but all in all, it does not play a big role in the hegemonically Black space of the Nigerian forum. In Nigeria, race is a category much less relevant than ethnicity, as all indigenous populations in the region are Black. It is conceivable that some Nigerians hardly ever think of themselves as Black until they enter a place where this identity label is forced upon them. In this contrastive process, they “become Black” (Ibrahim 2003: 171). 3.5.2.2  Approaches to cultural authenticity Individuals claim membership in socio-cultural formations, such as ethnicities, based on how they self-identify, and others employ various criteria to judge whether to accept or refute the identity claim. Shenk suggests that authenticity emerges in interaction through “authenticating moves”, which are explicit instances of stancetaking (Englebretson 2007; Jaffe 2009), whereby identities are claimed, disputed, and contended for (Shenk 2007: 195). Stancetaking means “taking up a position with respect to the form or the content of one’s utterance” (Jaffe 2009a: 3). In taking a stance, “a social actor [… is] simultaneously evaluating objects, positioning subjects (self and others), and aligning with other subjects” (Du Bois 2007: 163). The main types are “affective stances”, which “represent emotional states of the speaker”, and “epistemic stances”, which “convey speakers’ degrees of certainty about their propositions” (Jaffe 2009a: 7). Investigating the construction of ethnic identities under diasporic conditions, Shenk finds that the stances recurrently taken toward one’s own and others’ authenticity claims, in her Mexican-American data, rely on three “linguistic and cultural ideologies” of “purism”: “purity of bloodline, purity of nationality, and […] linguistic fluency” (2007: 195–196). The bloodline criterion insists that



Chapter 3.  Resources, repertoires, and authenticity in times of globalization 

both one’s parents must be “idealized”13 members of the relevant ethnic group (Shenk 2007: 201). Pure nationality depends on one’s birthplace, which should be the country associated with the aspired ethnicity, while the linguistic condition demands error-free production of the relevant heritage language (2007: 201). Similar criteria are likely to pertain to U.S.-Nigerians as well, and one does find traces of such ideologies being applied in their authenticating moves. However, at least the language criterion does not seem to operate in such a strict manner on the Nigerian forum as it does in Shenk’s (2007) conversational data from a Mexican-American group of friends, where ordinary, innocent speech production errors spark inauthenticating ridicule. In my data, tolerance for non-standardized language – vernaculars, ungrammatical sentences, typographical errors – varies greatly depending on user and situation but is generally fairly high (Examples 22 and 56). Moreover, further criteria could be added, such as visits to and contact with Nigeria, intention to return, knowledge of matters Nigerian, or consumption of Nigerian cultural products (Chapter 8). Therefore, even though Shenk’s (2007) ideologies of ethnic “purity” offer useful pointers, the authentication processes in my data might be understood better by adopting a more flexible, nuanced, and forgiving model of authenticity, presented below. An approach to authenticity that seems particularly fruitful in diasporic settings is Blommaert and Varis’s (2013) view of authenticity as “enoughness”. They discuss late-modern identity construction more generally, noting the fragmentation of contemporary lives and identities, characterized by “several micro-hegemonies valid in specific segments of life and behavior” and partial memberships in changing identity categories, rather than one order creating coherence over all areas of an individual’s life (Blommaert & Varis 2013: 145). Identities emerge as individuals continually align themselves in their discourses and other behavior toward various “sets of features that are seen […] as emblematic of particular identities” (2013: 146). Such features may be “artefacts, styles, forms of language, places, times, forms of art or aesthetics, [or] ideas”, and alignment might be in the form of “affinity, attachment, belonging; or rejection, disgust, disapproval” (2013: 146– 147). In the context of diasporic Nigerians aspiring to a Nigerian identity, relevant features could be food items, music, customs, values, linguistic resources, or any other practices or objects seen as associated with Nigeria.

.  Obviously, one’s ancestors are in no way more objectively or inherently authentic as the person him-/herself can be, but this is a convenient fiction the interactants assume in the situation; in this sense, the parental ethnic identity is idealized.

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Such features are assembled non-randomly to combinations that stand for specific identities, and this is where “enoughness” enters the picture: “[o]ne has to ‘have’ enough of the emblematic features in order to be ratified as an authentic member of an identity category” (Blommaert & Varis 2013: 146). Blommaert and Varis (2013: 148) specifically mention migrant groups and social media as contexts in which enoughness might be a particularly appropriate way of approaching authenticity, and in which small doses of relevant features might adequately authenticate an identity. As what is enough in a situation can clearly be contested, this idea fits well with the constructivist view of authenticity as negotiated, relative, and context-dependent. What enoughness might mean in the context of diasporic linguistic repertoires is articulated by Moll, who argues that “authentication and social identity are often especially precarious in diasporic settings, including virtual ones, where the linguistic resources chosen to index ethnic identity do not necessarily correlate with native speaker competence” (2015: 30). In such settings, authenticity does not stem from a complete or realistic rendering of a variety but operates by the standards of the community in question. Ibrahim (2003) makes a similar observation concerning African immigrants in Canada and their acquisition of selected aspects of AAVE (or “Black Stylized English” as he terms it). According to Ibrahim, a “full mastery” of the variety is not necessary, as specific “ritual expressions” suffice to do the identity work the young immigrants aim to do (2003: 173). Such fixed phrases, in Ibrahim’s (2003) data adopted mainly from hip-hop culture, exemplify the easiest, most superficial language learning. Chapter 6 discusses the significance of both radically selective and more comprehensive adoption of AAVE resources by Nigerian immigrants for their identity work. Finally, it must be emphasized that these new constructivist understandings of authenticity do not challenge its value as something highly desirable. As Coupland keeps pointing out, the recently won awareness of authenticity as “discursively constructed does not diminish its force as an organising principle for self-identity and cultural belonging” (2014: 21). It still “remains a quality of experience that we actively seek out, in most domains of life, material and social” (Coupland 2003: 417). Authenticity remains a leitmotif throughout the book, and Chapter 8 returns to different linguistic and non-linguistic factors in diasporic Nigerians’ identity construction as authentic Nigerians.

chapter 4

Data and methods While the “web as corpus” approach to web linguistics, in which the whole World Wide Web is utilized as a source for linguistic data, struggles to account for such basic factors as the “language, text type, age, provenance, authorship, format and originality” of its data (Bergh & Zanchetta 2008: 311), many corpus linguists working on online data have favored the “web for corpus” approach of downloading their own restricted data sets from the internet. The majority of existing web-based corpora consist of unannotated data collected with particular research questions in mind (Beißwenger & Storrer 2008: 294). A notable exception to this trend is constituted by the large, annotated, webbased corpora compiled at the Brigham Young University:14 the massive NOW (“Corpus of News on the Web”) corpus of online newspaper and magazine articles grows at a daily rate of 5–6 million words (Davies 2016–), the Wikipedia Corpus transforms the phenomenal crowd-authored online encyclopedia into a fully searchable database (Davies 2015), CORE (“Corpus of Online Registers of English”) divides its over 50 million words into 33 “registers” (Davies 2016), and the 1.9-billion-word GloWbE (“Corpus of Global Web-based English”) allows comparisons of blogs and other web pages from 20 English-speaking countries (Davies 2013). Whereas these corpora offer vast masses of English-language data from the internet, they do not satisfy the needs of a CMC linguist whose curiosity is directed toward more informal and interactional online discourse, which does not occur in online newspapers or even blogs but in social networking sites, chats, instant messaging services, and the like. This study relies on a corpus of such intriguingly interactive, multilingual, and colloquial data from a social context that enables the exploration of the linguistic construction of immigrant identities and authenticities. This chapter describes the data and methods of the project. It begins with an introduction of the Nigerian web forum from which data were downloaded, after which the make-up of the resulting corpus and the tool developed at the University of Freiburg for administering such data are presented. The target population

.  These corpora are available online at https://www.english-corpora.org/.

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being Nigerians in the United States, I mostly work on a subset of the data stemming from selected diasporic individuals; the sampling for and composition of this core data set is described. Next, some more words are said about the GloWbE corpus (Davies 2013), which is used as a secondary data set on a few occasions to support the primary Nigerian data. After that, the applied methods of analysis are discussed, along with challenges posed by the data and by AAVE as a target of investigation. Finally, legal and ethical issues related to online data collection are addressed. 4.1  Web forums as a data source The data for this project stem from a web forum – a “distinguishable, relatively established format of interactive, multiauthored, asynchronous” computer-mediated communication (Kytölä 2012: 108). The first forums were created in the mid1990s while the bulk appeared at the turn of the millennium (2012: 109); they can be seen as harbingers of what after 2004 came to be known as “Web 2.0” – popular platforms for social interaction based on user-generated content, collaboration, and participation (Herring 2013). Applying Herring’s “faceted classification scheme for computer-mediated discourse” (2007), forums can be described as asynchronous, pseudonymous, text-based types of public online communication, characterized by messages of an unlimited size exchanged between many participants, stored permanently, and displayed in “threads” from the oldest to the newest. Herring (2007) emphasizes that in addition to such technical factors, researchers have to take into consideration the various situational or social factors that affect interactions carried out via any CMC “mode”. These include various aspects of who the participants are, what goals they have, and what the tone, topics, purpose, and rate of interaction are. 4.1.1  Nairaland: A Nigerian web forum This project investigates questions of diasporic language use and identity relying on data from the Nigerian web forum Nairaland (www.nairaland.com). Nairaland (also NL) was launched in 2005 as a one-man project by the young entrepreneur Seun Osewa, and has since catapulted to a remarkable success, boasting over 2.4 million registered members in 202015 as Nigeria’s sixth most visited website (Alexa .  This number is inflated by users having several accounts. One reason for this is the desire to keep posting even during a temporary disciplinary ban of one’s primary account. Other conceivable reasons include deceptive or creative identity play (Turkle 1995), or wanting a



Chapter 4.  Data and methods 

2020). Anyone can passively browse the forum, but contributing requires a quick registration with an email address. NL established itself relying on a very traditional web forum format spiced up with selected affordances of social networking sites (cf. boyd & Ellison 2007). Its popularity increased year by year in its first decade, and until 2014, NL was the most visited Nigerian website (Alexa 2014). Topics discussed on Nairaland cover a wide range of areas of life, from public and general, to personal and intimate. The forum has a hierarchical structure (cf. Androutsopoulos 2007) with three subsections General, Entertainment, and Science/Technology each encompassing numerous thematic “boards”. Each board has one or several moderators with the power to delete or promote threads and ban or unban users. Boards are divided into subsections, and under each subsection, one finds thousands of topics (“threads”), created and named by individual users. The threads represent specific subjects of discussion, and each of them may comprise anything between one and several thousand messages (“posts”). A thread-level discursive affordance worth mentioning is the option of importing excerpts from previous posts, automatically marked as quotations by formatting. A similar function has in emails been found to improve coherence (Du Bartell 1995) and create a “sense of interactivity and immediacy” (Georgakopoulou 1997: 146). As the order of and relations between posts are crucial to their interpretation, quotes leave important traces that help to track this interactivity. Another crucial part of the forum space is the member profiles, created automatically for each member upon registration. A minimal profile shows the date of registration, the last visit, and total time spent on the forum, and contains links to posts published and topics launched by the user as well as their favorite sections. Moreover, many Nairalanders (also NLers) answer some of the prompting questions about gender, location, Yahoo! Messenger ID, Twitter username, photograph, personal text, and/or signature. The profile is a good starting point for collecting demographic data, but double-checking it against information given in the posts is recommendable, as some profiles mislead deliberately. Since the field for location can be filled out freely, in addition to recognizable places at any level of precision (“China”, “SOUTH WESTERN NIGERIA”, “­ Sydney, AU”, “Bronx, NYC”), it receives various evasive responses (“in my room?!”,

separate presence on different parts of the forum, such as business and romance. Moreover, the vast majority of profiles are very likely dormant, as an account is not deleted unrequested even after a prolonged period of inactivity. Nonetheless, even with these caveats, the number of people who have participated at some point is impressive. Furthermore, there is an additional group of people, the size of which can only be guesstimated, who have been in Nairaland’s sphere of influence without ever registering a username – passive lurkers are a well-known phenomenon on the internet.

 World Englishes on the Web

“SOMEWHERE IN THE MILKY-WAY GALAXY”, “why you wan know”). This shows how users appropriate any online space or affordance for communicative and identity construction purposes (Kytölä 2012: 118). The space for a profile picture is also regularly taken over for visual messages that do not reveal the user’s appearance, though certainly something else about their interests or personality. In addition to reading or posting messages and viewing others’ profiles or editing one’s own, NL offers further ways of interaction, such as private messaging. I have no way of knowing how frequently this affordance is taken advantage of, but my hunch is that it is secondary to the public interactions. One may also “follow” users, threads, or boards to access them through one’s profile. Since 2014, it has been possible to “share” others’ messages with one’s followers (Osewa 2014), extending an older function of supporting a post by “liking” it. Judged by boyd and Ellison’s criteria, NL can be classified as a “social network site” because it is one of those web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. (boyd & Ellison 2007: 211)

Not all of these affordances play a role in answering my research questions, but they help to understand the communality aspects and popularity of Nairaland. NL is largely text-based but allows visual material such as emojis, animated GIF images, and photographs. The variety of linguistic and rhetoric styles is vast, from long and carefully constructed arguments to unstructured rambling or spontaneous one-liners posted in haste. In the spirit of early 1990s CMC studies, when a key issue was relating online discourse to the two modalities of speech and writing, one could state that NL interactions cover the entire conceptual spectrum (Koch & Oesterreicher 1994: 587) from speech-like exchanges to written language. However, this interest is now largely considered passé, and even when examining wildly inventive orthographic manipulation, often said to imitate speech in writing, it is good to keep in mind Kytölä’s sobering statement: “web forum language is not spoken language” (2012: 109). Even a successful evocation of particular sounds is, ontologically speaking, still text. Moreover, users manipulate orthography selectively rather than systematically. Interactions on NL are richly multilingual. In addition to English, the forum is permeated with Nigerian Pidgin, while other Nigerian languages – particularly Yoruba and Igbo – appear in a lesser but still noteworthy degree. Other European and world languages occur very occasionally, rather symbolically than carrying significant information load. English on the forum is highly heterogeneous, displaying both British and American influence as well as characteristics peculiar



Chapter 4.  Data and methods 

to Nigeria, with occasional resources from vernaculars with “transnational reach” (Mair 2013b: 260), such as AAVE or Jamaican Creole. The role of English rather than any ethnic language as the dominant one – in accordance with the participation guidelines (Osewa 2005b) – can be seen as catering to aspirations of nationbuilding and national identity, problematic in Nigeria (Sections 3.5.2 and 7.2). As a non-thematic forum, Nairaland invites as members a diversity of people almost as heterogeneous as the Nigerian society itself – one finds the same variety of backgrounds, mother tongues, and ethnic and religious tensions as described in Section 2.1.1. Only one important segment of society is categorically excluded: the internetless. Despite dramatic improvement, the digital divide still cuts through the Nigerian population: between 2005 and 2015, the portion of homes with access to the internet rose from 3.5% to 45.1% (Internet Live Stats 2016)16 – concomitantly, the number of Nairaland members skyrocketed. To get an impression of the relative ethnic distribution of the forum participants, I searched for self-identificatory statements using the simple formula “I am/ (‘)m/be (a/an) Yoruba/Igbo/Hausa”. There are 2,535 instances of self-identifying as Yoruba, 2,524 as Igbo, and only 240 as Hausa using such a clause. This is a coarse measure, but it supports the observation that NL is considerably more popular among the Yoruba and the Igbo than the largest ethnic group, the Hausa. There are also representatives of smaller groups, those who do not emphasize or even reveal their ethnicity, as well as occasional non-Nigerian participants, who tend to be partners and friends of Nigerians. One characteristic of Nairaland decisive for its suitability as a data source for this project is its popularity not only in Nigeria but also among emigrants and foreign-born individuals of Nigerian heritage. Figure 1 offers a good approximation of the geolocational distribution of the NL user base. It is a black-and-white reproduction of a map generated with our Net Corpora Administration Tool (­Section 4.2.3). Active countries are colored gray, and the size of each circle represents the amount of linguistic activity at that location. It represents the number of messages rather than users from a certain location, thus giving more weight to frequent posters. The visualization relies on 23 frequent grammatical words and manually geolocated key contributors; the process is described in 4.2.3.

.  The statistics only include connections at people’s homes. Before the cell phone emerged as a massively popular device for surfing the web in the 2010s, many Nigerians frequented the country’s numerous “cyber cafés” (Olofinlua 2015). Therefore, the low percentages do not tell the whole truth about internet usage in Nigeria.

 World Englishes on the Web

Figure 1.  Map of the geographical distribution of Nairaland users

The hub of forum activity is the Western African Federal Republic of Nigeria, and especially its largest city Lagos, but there are significant diasporas particularly in the United States (spread fairly evenly across the country) and Britain (focused in the capital), as well as dispersed individuals in many corners of the world. 4.1.2  Nairaland as a virtual community NL can be conceived of in various ways: as a service for information and entertainment, as a collaboratively written text, as conversation, as a place for people to meet, as a community. Some more metaphorical than others, each of these partially overlapping conceptualizations captures some important aspect of what NL is to its users (or members/participants/contributors/denizens, each term, again, implying a slightly different approach to the forum). As the capability of a web forum to host a community is not a universally accepted idea, it is briefly addressed next. Whether and how the term “community” applies in online settings has been a hotly debated issue ever since Rheingold ([1993] 2000: xx) defined virtual communities as “social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on […] public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace”. Thurlow et al. interpret this to mean that the decisive factor is whether people “feel like they’re a community” (2004: 111). Back in 1993, Rheingold suggested community-building on the internet to be not merely possible but ineluctably human: “whenever CMC technology becomes available to people anywhere, they inevitably build virtual communities with it” ([1993] 2000: xx). Rheingold’s is an inclusive and optimistic understanding of virtual communities – as he admits in the 2000 revised edition of his c­ lassic



Chapter 4.  Data and methods 

The Virtual Community – partly sparked by the will to counter the negative views of social life on the internet prevalent at the time (Rheingold 2000: 324), and very much based on personal experiences in one community. At the other end of the opinion spectrum of the time, for example, Weinreich (1997) concluded, after examining German bulletin board systems, that “there is no such thing as a ‘digital community’”. Since Rheingold’s ([1993] 2000) oft-cited first definition, more precise criteria have been suggested for determining whether a specific online constellation merits the label of “a community”. On one of the more rigorous lists, Herring, warning against applying the term indiscriminately, combines previous scholars’ ideas to suggest that virtual communities are characterized by 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

active, self-sustaining participation; a core of regular participants shared history, purpose, culture, norms and values solidarity, support, reciprocity criticism, conflict, means of conflict resolution self-awareness of group as an entity distinct from other groups emergence of roles, hierarchy, governance, rituals  (Herring 2004: 355)

Concrete signs of each of these are visible in many NL interactions, but more in the behavior of some users than others. One could argue that NL might be a community for some members though definitely not for all. Heyd, who has also done extensive sociolinguistic research on NL, calls it “a web forum that doubles as an online community” (2016: 293). Recently, many sociolinguists have viewed social groupings in online contexts as “communities of practice”. Originally constituting a “perspective on knowing and learning” developed by Lave and Wenger (1991), communities of practice are “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner 2015). A definition more relevant to non-professional communities of practice is Tagg’s (2015: 232) description of them as “groups which are bound together by common purposes and practices, and which entail an amount of shared specialized knowledge and mutual engagement”. Eckert elucidates the usefulness of the concept for CMC studies: The value of the notion [of community of practice] to sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology lies in the fact that it identifies a social grouping not in virtue of shared abstract characteristics (e.g., class, gender) or simple copresence (e.g., neighborhood, workplace), but in virtue of shared practice. In the course of regular joint activity, a community of practice develops ways of doing things, views, values, power relations, ways of talking. (Eckert 2006: 683)

 World Englishes on the Web

It is primarily in this sense that Nairaland can be called a community and is called so in this study. Although the focus is more on repertoires and resources than community aspects, the forum is more than a coincidental source of data – it constitutes a crucial part of the social context forming (and formed by) the interactions taking place there. 4.2  Corpus compilation and composition 4.2.1  The “World languages – digital languages” project Data for this study were collected within a cross-linguistic research project on “World languages  – digital languages” at the University of Freiburg, Germany (Mair & Pfänder 2013).17 Its goal was to explore the “[d]iversification and pluricentric standardization processes of the world languages English, Spanish and French in post-colonial settings” as well as the “[t]ransformation of locally anchored vernaculars under the effect of globalization, diasporic usage and computer-mediated communication” (Heyd & Alcón 2013). The project led to the compilation of a large multilingual corpus from web forums based in Jamaica, Cameroon, Congo, Nigeria, and several Spanish-speaking countries in South America (Mair & Pfänder 2013: 533–534). Information scientist Daniel Alcón López was responsible for the download process, during which selected web forums were copied in their entirety using a web crawler, meta-information was extracted by means of a parser, and the whole data set was imported into a database. The thread-based structure was retained in the process, as well as the links between users and their posts. The text was not submitted to any linguistic annotation. This imposes limitations on searchability, but good-quality annotation was simply not considered realizable. No existing automatic annotator can cope with such heavily multilingual data pervaded by intentional and non-intentional non-standardized orthography, grammar, and vocabulary; manual correction of a data set of this size would be a lifelong project. Settling for annotating and examining the more standardized portions of the data would be nonsensical because the phenomena of interest lurk precisely in the standard-defying, experimentally spelled, and multilingual parts. The first round of material was downloaded in late 2008 and early 2009 and comprised 90.5 million words of “post-colonial diasporic web forum” data (Mair

.  The project, “World languages  – digital languages: Digital monitoring of ongoing change and diversification in English, French and Spanish”, was funded by the Deutsche ­Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG grant MA 1652/9, to Mair; PF 699/4, to Pfänder) 2011–2014 and by a part-time fellowship at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies in 2012–2013.



Chapter 4.  Data and methods 

& Pfänder 2013: 533–534). The Nigerian segment  – a predecessor of my corpus – consisted of 17.3 million words from 2005–2008. Even more importantly, the corpus management tool utilized in this project, introduced in Section 4.2.3, was developed. Heyd has conducted extensive research on the first version of the Nairaland corpus (2014, 2015, 2016; Heyd & Mair 2014; Heyd & Honkanen 2015), and Mair has drawn on it in several papers (2013b, 2013a, 2016; Mair & Pfänder 2013; Heyd & Mair 2014). However, a newer, larger set of material were collected in 2014 that had not been put to use until work on the present study began. 4.2.2  The Nairaland 2 corpus The corpus for this project was downloaded from the Nairaland forum in 2014 following the same procedure as other corpora in the “World languages – digital languages” project. It consists of the entire forum archive from its conception in 2005 until the day of download. Table 2.  Corpus facts Corpus name

Nairaland 2

Source

www.nairaland.com

Time span

March 14, 2005–February 19, 2014

# registered members

302,714

# messages

19,169,867

# messages per member

63.3 (mean)

# tokens

843.1 million

# tokens per message

44.0 (mean)

The size of the corpus reflects the increasing popularity of the forum: the number of registered members multiplied by 25 between the two rounds of data collection – from almost 12,000 in 2008 to over 300,000 in 2014 – probably as a result of snowball effects of word of mouth, and supported by more and more Nigerian households attaining access to the internet (a rise from 15.9% to 42.7% 2008–2014 according to Internet Live Stats 2016). In its extended form, the corpus documents the maturation of Nairaland into a significant social media platform both nationally and in the global Nigerian diaspora. The corpus can be administered through a web interface designed for the purpose, introduced next. 4.2.3  The Net Corpora Administration Tool A central contribution of the “World languages – digital languages” project (Mair & Pfänder 2013) was the development of a corpus tool suited to searching through

 World Englishes on the Web

web forum data, visualizing results, and adding meta-data to users and posts. This task, undertaken by Daniel Alcón Lopez, led to the creation of the Net Corpora Administration Tool (NCAT). As the tool is web-based, the researcher need not install any software or store data. Initially, one could operate on the different corpora simultaneously. Nairaland 2 is accessed separately, but the functionality of NCAT remains the same. The main purpose of NCAT is to enable searching through downloaded web forum texts for language strings – the search object can be a word, part of a word, or consecutive or non-consecutive words in a post. As posts are linked to their authors, the search can be limited to one or several users. The query may also be restricted to a time period, though this possibility was not utilized in my analysis. NCAT reports the number of posts with the requested string and the number of users who wrote them, and generates a chronologically ordered list of the posts. This represents a limitation of the tool: it does not count the total occurrence of the search string but the number of posts in which it occurs. Therefore, for fully reliable frequency figures, manual checking is required, which can be tedious but greatly adds to one’s familiarity with the data. Unverified figures are given when the whole corpus is searched. For the most part, however, I operate on a subcorpus, introduced in the next section, and with verified counts. Ultimately, one’s research questions determine which units of communication are the most relevant. Division into subforums could be pertinent for correlating linguistic features with topic (e.g., Androutsopoulos 2007). Entire threads may be needed for qualitative explorations of interactional or pragmatic issues, whereas the post-level is likely to suffice for quantitative structural analyses. Often, co-text beyond the post itself is needed to fully understand its contents. NCAT supports this: a window can be opened from each post to view its host thread. This has the advantage of allowing automatic “feature-based selection” of data without the commonly co-occurring “loss of context” (Androutsopoulos 2013: 238–239). NCAT also incorporates a profile of each user, accessible through their posts. It contains their date of registration, post count, and location as given in the profile. Moreover, the researcher may fill in a gender, country and/or city, if known, or add comments. The meta-data fed into these fields are automatically attached to all posts by the user. Researchers may also create their own labels, attach them to posts, and search for or within posts carrying a label. Labels can be shared within the NCAT system for an entire research team to work jointly on a pool of data. Part of the corpus has been manually tagged for location. Information given in the user profiles, when available, was employed as a basis for geotagging, but it was verified against forum contributions. This required detective work, such as searching for the phrases “here in” or “live in”, to see if the user volunteers this piece of information in their posts. A list of top contributors was inspected in an attempt



Chapter 4.  Data and methods 

to locate them. Currently, a location has been identified for 2,193 of the 300,000 registered users (0.7%) at least at the country level. Since they include many of the most prolific authors, the tagged data cover a portion considerably larger than one percent. Messages from users who had deleted their account before the download are included in the corpus but cannot be assigned to specific accounts; these cover 4% of the data. Geotagging provides two advantages. Firstly, NCAT produces information about the distribution of the results over time, users, and space. Secondly, NCAT visualizes the geographical distribution of the results on a world map. Such maps, however, have limited usefulness for the present project, as it focuses on usage within the United States. The spillover of African-American resources to Nigerian territory is examined with the help of the NCAT frequency statistics as well as a second corpus that allows for comparisons between varieties of English globally (Davies 2013; Section 4.3). To utilize the NCAT statistics, a general distribution of the data must be established to which the distribution of any search item can be compared. For that purpose, a search was conducted for a set of common, geographically neutral grammatical items (a, and, are, at, be, do, for, have, he, I, im, in, is, it, not, of, that, the, to, u, was, with, you). This yielded 15.8 million documents, 82.5% of the total. Of those, 29.9% are tagged at the country level, 66.2% are not tagged, and 3.9% belong to deleted accounts. The distribution of the geotagged portion is as follows: 55.5% stem from Nigeria, 18.1% from the United States, 16.4% from Great Britain, and 9.9% from other places. It is this 18-percent baseline to which an item must be compared to judge whether it is over- or underrepresented among U.S.-based Nairalanders. 4.2.4  The core 50 subcorpus Since my research questions deal specifically with language practices of Nigerians in the USA, it was necessary to isolate among the user body U.S.-based members, and restrict most of the investigation to them. As detecting user locations manually is time-consuming and not all users reveal their whereabouts, it was both practically and theoretically impossible to include all U.S.-Nigerians in the study, but a sample had to be collected. It was set at 50 users, as a compromise between a larger sample allowing for more reliable generalizations and time limitations precluding the in-depth analysis of too many individual repertoires. These central participants, referred to as the “core 50”, represent a judgment sample. Probability sampling techniques had to be ruled out as the entire target population could not be identified and accessed. The chosen strategy is justified by my deep familiarity with the forum, acquired through ethnographic observation of the community and its online practices. Admittedly, this sampling method

 World Englishes on the Web

forces the focus on the qualitative, but this is compatible with the project’s overall goals. The core 50 include many prolific writers but also a number of marginal members who published at most a few hundred posts. This enables the investigation of both the center and the peripheries of the community. Some frequently posting members contribute over 10,000 messages; in terms of volume, they form a large part of the core data set. The remaining participants were chosen because they attracted attention during the initial observation and exploration phase. For some, it was their AAVE usage in particular that made me consider them. Even though this slants the sample, I judged it essential that in a study of U.S.-Nigerians’ AAVE practices, the informant group include some who employ AAVE prominently. The resulting data set, although unable to claim full representativeness, contains a good slice of interactions by U.S.-based Nairalanders, and can be used to examine discourses in and about AAVE, as well as other vernacular resources in diasporic Nigerian computer-mediated communication. The core 50 produce 17.8 million tokens in 345,926 posts, which constitute 2.1% of all tokens and 1.8% of all posts in the corpus. Both men and women are represented, although not equally: the twenty-two females form 44% of the group but produce 57% of the messages. Of the ethnic groups, mainly Yoruba and Igbo are represented, though there are also seven individuals of mixed heritage, and four representatives of smaller ethnic groups. The Hausa seem to be overall much less present on Nairaland than the other two major ethnic groups. The informants are uniformly young, but this is a feature of the user population rather than the sampling process. It seems that many Nigerians frequent NL during their school and university years, and the forum takes a back seat when they start families and/or professional careers. The distinction between firstgeneration immigrants, born in Nigeria (39 users) or elsewhere (two users), and second-generation immigrants, born in the USA to Nigerian parents (nine users), is crucial. However, one must also take into consideration how long ago a person migrated and whether they have spent extended periods of time outside the USA at some point. As Sharma (2011: 487) declares, “‘second generation’ is not a unitary category”. Therefore, I consider individual life paths instead of relying on coarse divisions, for example, into migrant generations. Due to the limitations of the non-probabilistic sampling method, I have to be careful about generalizing my findings to the entire U.S.-Nigerian population. It can be assumed that Nairalanders’ experiences represent in many respects those of U.S.-Nigerians generally; however, I do identify two possible biases. Firstly, most NLers are in their teenaged years or early adulthood, while the median age of Nigerian first-generation immigrants in the USA is 42 (Migration Policy Institute 2015: 2–3). Some leaning toward younger informants is unavoidable with much of



Chapter 4.  Data and methods 

CMC data. Moreover, one could argue that exploring young people’s attitudes and ideologies allows looking into the future as well as the present. The second bias is that NLers are likely to display a greater interest in matters Nigerian than U.S.-Nigerians on average, implied by the very decision to join a Nigerian web forum. However, since this does not translate into exclusively positive attitudes toward Nigeria (Heyd & Honkanen 2015: 22), the type of informants available is not entirely truncated in that respect either. What is unavailable is access to individuals completely assimilated into the U.S.-American society, except vicariously. 4.3  Global comparisons: The Corpus of Global Web-based English To complement my primary data from the Nigerian web forum, I draw on another large international web corpus to support my analyses. The Corpus of Global Webbased English (GloWbE) (Davies 2013) consists of 1.9 billion words of World Englishes from “informal blogs (about 60 percent of the corpus) and other web-based materials, such as newspapers, magazines, company websites, and so on” (Davies & Fuchs 2015: 3). GloWbE contains data from 20 English-speaking countries across the globe,18 ranging from 35 million words from Tanzania to 390 million from the USA and the UK each. These differences do not pose a problem as the corpus interface offers results normalized per million words as well as color-coded visualizations. The Nigerian component of GloWbE consists of 42.6 million words, which is a twentieth of the size of the Nairaland 2 corpus. However, the strength of GloWbE is the cross-national comparisons it permits. A possible weakness of GloWbE is that the websites have been selected randomly by Google (see Davies & Fuchs [2015: 4] for how), so there is no guarantee that the same types of websites are included for each country. We only know that roughly half of them stem from blogs. For example, some pages from NL are included in GloWbE as part of the “general” Nigerian websites, supposed to represent “more formal genres and text types” than blogs (2015: 4). Although randomness is the best principle for collecting data sets bigger than what can be handpicked, the downside is that it is unclear how well the components (in this case,

.  The countries represented are Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and the United States.

 World Englishes on the Web

countries) correspond to one another in terms of genre, level of formality, balance, and other factors. Another potential source of imprecision is the use of Google’s Advanced Search for automated country identification. Although Davies and Fuchs (2015: 4–5) insist that Google’s heuristics locate websites highly accurately, the authors choose to ignore the fact that websites based in Nigeria – NL as an example par excellence  – may contain text from people from or in other locations. With such a large corpus, however, this results probably in minor inaccuracies at most. A more fundamental problem is how grouping the vast global heterogeneity of English usage into national varieties (done also, e.g., in Kachru’s 1985 classic model of three concentric circles) is at best outdated and simplistic, and at worst – in the case of countries that host numerous ethnic groups with distinctive linguistic behavior – pointless or misleading. Corpus-based studies of World Englishes tend to ignore some of the complexities of the sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert 2010). The cure is to combine corpus-linguistic methods with rigorous qualitative analyses. Despite these limitations, GloWbE is an intriguing and powerful tool, and its search results serve as indicators of large-scale trends in the geographical distribution of linguistic items and cultural concepts. It is used for two purposes in this project. Firstly, it is consulted to see which AAVE-related resources have already spread to Nigeria. Secondly, when examining items that allegedly characterize English usage in Nigeria as opposed to other countries, these claims are supported with data from GloWbE. GloWbE results are mentioned as additional support when they suggest that a resource occurs in Nigerian web discourse more than in most other English-speaking countries. 4.4  Methods of analysis The present study combines corpus linguistics with ethnographically-informed qualitative discourse analysis of computer-mediated communication. It falls broadly in the realm of computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA), described by Herring (2004: 339) as a language-oriented approach to the research of online behavior, realized as an empirical investigation of “logs of verbal interaction (characters, words, utterances, messages, exchanges, threads, archives, etc.)”. The behavior targeted in this book is the construction of migrant, ethnic, national, and other social identities in diasporic and transnational contexts. This topic is approached through the analysis of orthographic, grammatical, and lexical features associated with linguistic codes relevant for the target population, U.S.Nigerians. In describing the assumptions underlying CMDA, Herring adds to the basic discourse-­analytic tenet  – that “discourse exhibits recurrent patterns”



Chapter 4.  Data and methods 

conditioned by speakers’ conscious and unconscious choices  – another, CMCspecific one: to fight the technological determinism that plagued much of early CMC research, Herring suggests “computer-mediated discourse may be, but is not inevitably, shaped by the technological features of computer-mediated communication systems” (2004: 343). This is a CMDA study in this sense as well – it deals with linguistic variation in a particular online context, pointing out how the online environment influences interactions but focusing on user agency rather than the medium. However, CMDA itself is not a method, but numerous methods can be used to do CMDA. Mine rely prominently on corpus linguistics – the computer-assisted analysis of large amounts of natural language. NCAT allows the targeting of desired subsets of the data, such as all posts from particular users or with a certain linguistic string. However, this study departs from the purely corpus-linguistic approach in that my familiarity with the platform and community enables me to do much more than count the occurrences of features. In fact, the purpose of quantification in this work is to support the qualitative analyses, as the data set is not measured against another one, as would be customary in the corpus-linguistic tradition (Hinrichs 2015b: 22). The qualitative and frequency-based analyses will be described in more detail below after explaining how the principles of (discourse-centered) (virtual) ethnography (e.g., Hine 2000; Androutsopoulos 2008; Kytölä & Androutsopoulos 2012) are selectively applied in this study. The classic ethnographic method, described by Hine (2000: 4–5), contains “a researcher spending an extended period of time immersed in a field setting, taking account of the relationships, activities and understandings of those in the setting and participating in those processes”, with the goal of understanding and describing the local meaning-making processes of the culture in question. The elements of prolonged immersion and observation are crucial to this project; however, my position is not that of an active participant but of a lurker, who “reads messages posted to a public forum […] but does not respond” (2000: 160). This has the advantage of evading the observer’s paradox, which occurs when the researcher’s presence influences the data, though it is not ideal from an ethical point of view. My involvement is passive also in the sense that it does not include interviews or other direct contact with the participants, advocated, for example, by Androutsopoulos (2008). Although the study could have benefitted from interviewing users or discussing analyses with them, this could not be done within its time-frame and scope. Nonetheless, Androutsopoulos’s (2008) guidelines for observing online contexts are relevant; he advises the virtual ethnographer to 1. Examine relationships and processes rather than isolated artefacts 2. Move from core to periphery of a field 3. Repeat observation

 World Englishes on the Web

4. Maintain openness 5. Use all available technology 6. Use observation insights as guidance for further sampling (Androutsopoulos 2008: 6)

While traditional ethnography is based on the copresence of a researcher and informants in time and space, this is neither possible nor necessary in virtual ethnography. Internet users themselves are scattered in space, so the virtual ethnographer’s presence is akin to that of the informants  – disembodied. Web forum archives enable examining interactions without having to have been there in real time; this grants access to a time span otherwise hardly plausible within a single research project (in my case, almost nine years). From the ethnographic toolkit, this study adopts the appreciation for the importance of context and the “richness and complexity of social life” (Hine 2000: 41–42), as well as the methodological flexibility, but in many significant ways, it is not full-fledged ethnography. It adapts virtual ethnography, which, in turn, adapts the originally anthropological method of ethnography (2000: 65), and it can at best be said to be inspired or informed by ethnography. The ethnographic touch is clear, for example, in the presentation of the Nairaland forum in Section  4.1, which shows how a careful exploration of an online site and its affordances enables “charting the complex architecture of that space and understanding the various relations among its components” (Androutsopoulos 2008: 5). Moreover, the study shares many of the central interests Kytölä and Androutsopoulos (2012: 180) identify for the discourse-analytic and ethnographic investigation of online multilingualism, namely “the emergence of multilingual practices and communities, their local and situated character, the social meanings of multilingual language use, the norms governing multilingual usage in various genres, and holistic description of multilingual communities”. My initial ethnographic exploration of the forum led to the selection of 50 U.S.-based Nigerians as representatives of the target population. In the first instance, their individual digital language repertoires were observed by reading through a selection of each member’s posts and making note of the following: 1. Sociodemographic information, such as place of residence, gender, age, ethnicity, migration trajectory, occupation, etc. 2. Metalinguistic commentary, such as expressions of language attitudes and ideologies, or evaluations of one’s competence in different linguistic codes. 3. Narratives of belonging (Heyd 2016) and identity statements, particularly concerning categories of ethnicity, nationality, race, etc. 4. Use of any multilingual or non-standardized language resources.



Chapter 4.  Data and methods 

This scrutiny and note-taking of interesting phenomena was carried out for each user until a point of saturation at which a clear impression had been gained of their repertoire. For the eleven users with fewer than a thousand posts each, this meant going through all their contributions. For the others, it was 5–50% of their posts, and as a minimum, 300 per poster. In addition to this systematic reading, specific topics were targeted by searching for strings such as “language”, “I speak”, “English”, “African/Black American(s)”, “Ebonics”, “Pidgin”, and others. This first part of the analysis had several important goals and consequences. Firstly, it provided an overview of the core data set. Secondly, accessing the community through the lens of various individuals further deepened my ethnographic knowledge of it. Thirdly, during this purely qualitative phase, grouping members into five AAVE “user types” depending on how they employ AAVE in their online interactions emerged as a meaningful approach. The ethnographic sensitivity, characterized by the absence of a methodological straightjacket and a priori assumptions about what there is to find, allowed me to follow this path of investigation. Finally, simultaneous to assigning each member to a user type, I started observing specific practices, linguistic features, and attitudes that seemed characteristic of each type. Thus, the repertoire analysis helped me to operationalize my research interest by providing ideas about which linguistic features and phenomena might be particularly frequent or revealing, and thus merit a closer qualitative and/or quantitative look. During this process, I became aware of the complex negotiations of authenticity surrounding frequent AAVE usage (Section 6.2.1), typical contexts of styleshifting into AAVE (Section 6.2.2), the practices of minimal usage by individuals with significantly truncated AAVE competence (Section 6.2.5), and the AAVE-related features almost all core members employ irrespective of their attitudes toward the variety (Section 6.2.6). NCAT permits tracking down all instances of selected linguistic resources produced by the core 50. For most of the features discussed, frequency figures are given; however, since they cannot be generalized beyond the sample, they mainly serve to support the primary, micro-level qualitative analysis by allowing popularity comparisons between features. The main interests being the different ways U.S.-Nigerians make use of AAVE-related resources, and the implications of these usage patterns for authenticity and identity construction, close discourse analysis (e.g., Gee 1999) emerged as the most fruitful method. The role of NCAT in this pursuit was to assist in accessing the relevant discourses among the large data set quickly and conveniently. However, the utilization of corpus tools on web data is not without problems; some of these will be discussed next. Applying the criteria of traditional corpus linguistics, the texts constituting the Nairaland 2 corpus would be judged as unauthoritative in many ways. They do not represent a single language variety but a more multifarious cluster of styles.

 World Englishes on the Web

Whereas multilingualism has often been treated as an unwanted disturbance in a corpus, it is very much the bread and butter of this data set, which contains close juxtaposition of resources associated with different languages within single messages as well as entire texts in languages other than the dominant English. Even the most monolingual parts are not internally coherent or standardized in terms of orthography or grammar; both conscious and unintended non-standardized spelling and grammar abound. The different texts (posts) are interdependent, sometimes to the point of syntactic dependence (e.g., question–answer-pairs). They contain quotations realized through different practices, sometimes the only formal indication being a web address of an online newspaper at the end. The data are not exclusively textual, as in some cases, meaning relies on emojis or other pictorial elements ordinary search engines cannot target. Many authors cannot be identified to any degree, and the author population is neither homogeneous nor balanced in terms of location, gender, or other sociodemographic features. Each author has contributed an idiosyncratic number of texts of idiosyncratic lengths. Admittedly, the data are messy, and this does have significant downsides  – above all inhibiting automatic syntactic parsing, lemmatization, and partof-speech tagging, which would be a prerequisite for any grammar-oriented searching. However, the messiness is also the data set’s biggest strength. NL is a rich source for exploring vernacular literacies, orthographic variation and creativity, and the emergence of norms in less regulated linguistic spaces. Moreover, the data authentically reflect particular social and interactional realities emblematic of our globalized time: technologically-mediated long-distance communication, the internet as a context of reading and writing, virtual communality, and global diasporas interacting with their host as well as home societies. Irrespective of what language use in these contexts is like, it inherently deserves our attention. This being said, the situation does pose challenges, some of which are discussed next. There were two broad problems in the process of identifying and measuring AAVE influence in my data. The first one is theoretical in nature, having to do with the frequent bi-, or even multivalency between the relevant varieties (Woolard 1999). Many of the features identified as belonging to AAVE by previous scholars are not found exclusively in AAVE but also in other varieties relevant to U.S.Nigerians, such as Nigerian English, Nigerian Pidgin, or colloquial or Southern European American English. This somewhat weakens claims made about certain instances representing African-American influence in Nigerian CMC. For some features, a more detailed analysis than marking them as non-standardized is unviable. The problem is not exclusive to grammar: many lexical items coined by African Americans have “crossed over” to European-American usage too, and the African-American origin might even get lost in the process (Smitherman 2000: xiii–xiv). Such overlaps cause difficulties in determining if the usage of a feature



Chapter 4.  Data and methods 

is an indication of AAVE influence, or if it represents entirely different values and associations to that person instead. Here, one must keep in mind that this is a question of linguistic facts as much as the speaker’s perceptions, experiences, and aspirations. By facts I mean the reality of language use, which the research community is chasing through vigorous empirical investigation, often to compile their best understanding into lists of features. However, lay people do not have access to this kind of information, and their conceptualizations of specific varieties are based on their own encounters with individuals face to face and through media, and will always represent a narrower slice of the entire population than the scholarly community has access to. Consequently, individual interpretations only partially overlap with the research community’s understanding. For example, using ain’t as the negated form of have and be is fairly common among White Americans (Wolfram 2004: 128). However, it is even more frequent in African-American speech, where ain’t can also negate main verbs (Wolfram 2020). Therefore, it is easy to conceive of a situation where a Nigerian immigrant has only ever heard ain’t from Black people – perhaps due to a lack of White working-class contacts – and perceives it as an AAVE resource on a par with any distinctive feature, even though objectively seen, ain’t is definitely not exclusively African American. AAVE shares features not only with other varieties spoken in North America but also with Nigerian Pidgin. These include the absence of copular be before adjective phrases, zero marking of third-person singular in the present tense, done as a perfect auxiliary, and more. Depending on one’s take on the question of the origin of AAVE,19 such commonalities may be viewed as independent developments or as evidence of the creole origin of AAVE. The ambiguity can often be resolved by looking at the co-text: a bivalent feature surrounded by other Pidgin elements can relatively safely be classified as NigP, whereas within a post containing AAVE features and no Pidgin, the ambiguous element can be assumed to be associated with AAVE. Ideally, immediate co-text or metalinguistic comments disambiguate the situation, but in many instances, neither provides enough clues to do so. The way out of this conundrum, suggested in Chapter 3, is to keep in mind that the targets of investigation are the resources U.S.-Nigerians’ repertoires consist of (Blommaert 2010) and that each resource has a whole “field of potential meanings”, from which an appropriate one is chosen context-dependently (Eckert 2008a: 454); therefore, it is not necessary to assign every feature or instance to one linguistic code. The second problem with locating AAVE influence in the data is more practical and methodological, stemming particularly from the unannotated nature of

.  Green (2002: 8–10) offers an overview of the main lines of argument and their proponents.

 World Englishes on the Web

­ airaland 2. As Tables 6 and 7 in Section 5.3 show, many of both the distinctive N and non-distinctive features of AAVE are non-appearances of items present in standardized English. Prominent absentees include copular be in most contexts, possessive -s, and verbal inflection in the present (-s) as well as the past (-ed) tense. In fact, such absences form a significant part of all AAVE morphosyntax in Nairaland 2. However, obviously, one cannot search for the absence of an element in an untagged corpus. Omissions can only be hunted down manually, a method which clearly cannot cover such a large data set. Even though structures based on the absence of linguistic material are considered when they crop up in the data, systematic analysis has to be restricted to features tied to visible, searchable morphemes. My next point concerns sexually explicit and otherwise offensive language, which is as common on Nairaland as it is in most of the unedited internet. When the focus is not on uncensored language and other material is available, I strive to not display the most unpleasant examples, also in the name of protecting my informants. However, uncensored language is an integral part of AAVE communicative practices and the forum interactions. Understandings of what counts as obscene depend on community norms (Spears 2007: 104), and some items frowned upon by the mainstream U.S. society might not even be perceived as coarse in many African-American communities. In addition to including coarse or harsh language, the contents of some examples are unpleasant. Discretion is advised. Uncensored language poses minor problems also because of the peculiar system of censorship effective on the forum, implemented by its creator Seun Osewa, who has a vision of Nairaland as “the largest, broadest, most informative discussion forum for the people of Nigeria” (Osewa 2005a). In the “Nairaland Forum Participation Guidelines”, Osewa (2005b) forbids “swear words” as a “rule, not a guideline”, and in fact, certain words are even censored automatically when posted onto the forum. Bitch becomes “Naughty Lady”, ass becomes “Bottom”, fucking becomes “bleeping”, and so on – notice the inconsistent capitalization. Some censored words are not even vulgar: naked is replaced by “Unclad”, stupid by “silly”, and idiot by “slowpoke”, reflecting the forum designer’s desire to keep sexualized and insulting discourse out of Nairaland. However, as one might guess, such endeavors are doomed to fall short: irrespective of what the developer of a service envisages, users will appropriate it to suit their communicative needs and wishes. As Thurlow and colleagues point out, technologically-mediated communicative practices always arise out of the interplay of three factors: 1. what the technology is supposed to do (i.e. its design and commercial ideologies); 2. what the technology allows people to do (i.e. its practical or material affordances); 3. what people actually do with the technology (i.e. its uses and gratifications) (Thurlow, Lengel & Tomic 2004: 43)



Chapter 4.  Data and methods 

Osewa’s intention of fostering civilized and information-focused interaction by censoring undesired words fails on two accounts. Firstly, censoring words might irritate or confuse users, but it will not prevent them from discussing any topics. Secondly, as soon as people become aware of the automatic censorship, they look for ways to circumvent its restrictions. As a consequence, one finds many slightly manipulated spellings of blacklisted words, for instance, , , , or , as such simple procedures are, of course, enough to evade the censoring script. Unfortunately, such practices effectively make it impossible for me to identify all instances of an item like ass (focused on in Section 6.2.6.3) automatically. All common spellings have been included as well as all idiosyncratic forms encountered during the qualitative analysis. My approach toward the censored words is to reconstruct the typed-in forms from the output and show the messages in the form intended by their author. Variation in spelling is, of course, not restricted to taboo words but a pervasive characteristic of much of the data. Despite Osewa’s standardizing efforts, NL is generally unedited, and can be considered a less “regulated [orthographic] space” (Sebba 2007: 43), where spelling choices can be examined as “social practice” that can take over social meanings and contribute to identity construction (2007: 32–33). While all items have potential for undergoing orthographic tampering, elements from vernaculars such as AAVE or NigP, which do not have standardized spellings in the first place, are almost certain to display formal variation (see Section 7.3.3 for a typology of non-standardized orthography). Orthographic variation is a fascinating aspect of CMC data, but it does pose problems for machine-assisted searching. Researchers need to be aware of the issue in order to look for and recognize variants. Already during the qualitative phase, I made note of every new form of any potentially interesting item. Based on learnings from this and knowledge about possible correspondences between sounds and symbols (or symbols and other symbols, in the case of visually based substitution), different conceivable (and some unlikely) variants were queried for each examined item. This would have been easier if NCAT supported regular expressions, but it unfortunately does not. Despite all efforts, it is certain that some variants have slipped under my radar. However, they certainly do not constitute a quantitatively significant portion of the data but would merely have been a nice addition for the sake of completeness and as curious examples. Orthography as a variable is discussed on several occasions. 4.5  Legal and ethical issues For several years now, the legal and ethical issues raised by research on computermediated data have been debated in depth, yet some gray areas in using public CMC for research purposes are bound to remain. The parties of the “World l­anguages –

 World Englishes on the Web

digital languages” project, where my data stem from, verified the legality of their undertaking before starting the data collection process. Exceptions in the German Copyright Act concerning “personal scientific use” together with a doctrine of “implied license”20 permit corpus compilation of publicly accessible material such as web forum posts. Similarly, the “fair use” doctrine informing United States copyright law allows certain uses of copyrighted material without explicit permission from authors (CLARIN-D Legal Help Desk 2012). Crystal suggests that it can be argued that, simply by putting your words on a screen which can be accessed by an indefinite number of people you do not know, you have effectively made a public statement, which can be used, with appropriate acknowledgement, in the same way as other public statements (such as newspaper articles) are used. On this view, within the usual conventions of ‘fair quotation’, [researchers] may use extracts from these conversations without first requesting permission. (Crystal 2001: 192)

The collected corpora are accessible only via NCAT, which is located on a password-protected website, and they are, hence, not available to the public. However, just as important as respecting good legal practice is ensuring one’s investigation rests on ethically solid ground. In the absence of consensus and established ethical guidelines for the treatment of public material on the internet – apart from the overarching principle that research should never harm its targets in any way – researchers have to make their own decisions about what is necessary and what is feasible. Eckert weighs the question of consent in public contexts thus: The importance of consent depends on the potential effect the research may have on the participant or the participant’s community. Completely anonymous observations of public behavior are arguably of no grave consequence to the people being observed. And one could say that by performing acts in public, an individual is giving implicit consent to having those actions observed and recorded. (Eckert 2014: 14)

Although it is not ideal, I ultimately decided against trying to fish for statements of consent through the forum. Contacting all of the members would have been a completely utopian task. The intention is certainly not to publish anything that would be likely to lead to the identification of any participant, or in any way harm the community or its members. The number of posts quoted for most individual users remains low, and although the focus is not only on language but also on identity, I refrain from revealing more personal information about individual

.  “‘Implied license’ means that when people publish texts and images online, they assume others will ‘do’ certain things with their data” (CLARIN-D Legal Help Desk 2012).



Chapter 4.  Data and methods 

users than is necessary for the example at hand, along the lines recommended by Eckert (2014: 15). Steps were taken to protect users’ offline and online identities and privacy as far as possible. Instead of their self-selected usernames, which, although pseudonymous, can still be seen as connected to recognizable online personae, participants are referred to by identification numbers assigned by NCAT (e.g., User #12345). Proper names and other identificatory material are censored so that only the type of omitted element is indicated in angled brackets (e.g., [username]). Nevertheless, when dealing with publicly available writing, the issue remains that the curious reader may use word-for-word quotations to track down many of the original posts – a problem that has up till now not been satisfactorily solved by scholars (Androutsopoulos 2013: 247). One of the central tasks in ensuring the ethical usage of web forum data under implied license concerns the choice of illustrative examples. Many forum members voluntarily share intimate details of their lives. However, since it is conceivable that some of them are not always fully aware that interactions on NL are archived, entirely public, and searchable, researchers should not highlight posts that contain highly identifiable details or present their author in a morally dubious light. This responsibility is even greater when dealing with vulnerable groups such as minors, which some of my informants still were at the time of their participation in NL. The only user whose identity is not protected is the forum CEO Seun Osewa, who has repeatedly appeared in public in the context of Nairaland and who is only scrutinized in his role as its founder. All in all, it is paramount that researchers treat with respect the people and communities whose social and intellectual activities gave rise to their data. In the optimal case, sociolinguistic research may contribute positively to the development and status of the community under question (the idea of “giving back” [Eckert 2014: 22–23]). In my case, this means bringing marginalized and even stigmatized language practices into the spotlight, with the hope that increasing our understanding of their motives and creative aspects will help to legitimize them.

chapter 5

African Americans and their vernacular English African Americans21 are a large minority discriminated against in the United States. Their presence in North America is a direct consequence of the shameful historical fact of the Atlantic slave trade, yet their immense contributions to the formation of the United States as a leading economic, military, and cultural world power are still not fully acknowledged. Statistics show African Americans to be in a disfavored position in comparison to the U.S. general – and particularly White – population, not only in terms of education, employment, and politics but, according to Morris (2014a, 2014b), also in some areas of health, entertainment, justice, and environment. Despite some positive signs, such as the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the first African-American President of the United States, much work remains to be done in terms of racial equality in the USA. Increasingly, the struggle for equality takes place also in the social media, through devices such as the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which helped to launch the eponymous movement against police killings of Black people and other inequality problems. This chapter brings forth contextualizing information about African Americans (AAs) and African-American Vernacular English, particularly in relation to Nigerians in the United States. The first two subchapters reflect upon the relations between the two groups as well as attitudes prevalent among Nigerians toward AAs and their language, as attitudes affect the type and amount of influence (or lack thereof) the groups exert on each other’s language practices. Moreover, AAs are an important reference group because they are the “proximal host” for Nigerian immigrants in the United States, that is, “the category or group in which the immigrant group would be likely to be classified or absorbed” (Mittelberg & Waters 1992: 413). The third subchapter introduces the reference works used for

.  Following Spears (2014a: 101), “African American” refers to “people of known African descent whose families have been in the U.S. for at least 150 years, since around the time slavery was abolished” to distinguish them from more recent African arrivals. The U.S. Census Bureau (2018) statistics group African Americans and other Blacks together in one category, which makes up 12.7% of the total U.S. population.

 World Englishes on the Web

AAVE grammar and lexis as well as lists the relevant morphosyntactic features of AAVE, divided into distinctively African-American features and those shared with other varieties used by U.S.-Nigerians. The discussion of attitudes relies on previous scholarly work as well as an empirical ethnographic investigation of the Nairaland community. The Nairaland 2 corpus was searched through for various phrases referring to AAs and their vernacular, and the most relevant posts were followed to their threads to locate more discourses on the topic. As the unverified search results for “African American(s)” (8,906 documents by 2,486 members), “Black American(s)” (4,318 documents), and “Ebonic(s)” (501 documents) show, there is a considerable amount of discussion on the topic on NL. There are even threads devoted specifically to intergroup relations, such as “Africa And African-americans: How Deep Is The Resentment?”, “What Is Wrong With Dating Or Marrying An African American Man?”, or “Why Do Many Nigerian Guys In America Try So Hard To Be Gangsters?”, to name a few. The material was examined qualitatively and classified into positive and negative views about AAs or the relationship between the two Black groups until an understanding had been gained of the intergroup dynamics as seen by Nigerians. This investigation was not restricted to the core 50, but U.S.-based users are generally more likely to have an interest in this topic. 5.1  R  elations between U.S.-Nigerians and African Americans: “How Deep Is The Resentment?” In our era of mobility and migration, Nigerians and AAs increasingly come into contact, particularly in the United States, where “new African diasporas” (Koser 2003b) have been forming through recent (that is, post-colonial) migration, of which Nigerians constitute a significant part. It should be kept in mind that the dyadic relationship discussed here is a mere fragment of a much broader spectrum of inter-ethnic encounters and interactions that take place in the multicultural U.S.-American society. In addition to Anglophone West Africans, there are numerous other immigrant groups that contribute to the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic heterogeneity in the USA, including people from the Commonwealth Caribbean, Hispanophones from Mexico and Central America, Francophones from Haiti and various African nations, and further groups, for instance, from different Asian countries. Waters (1999) interviewed West Indian immigrants in the United States about their experiences of integration, racial and ethnic identity choices, racism, and race relations with the local groups. Although the focus here is on Nigerians and AAs, one must remember that the U.S. ethnic and racial landscape is infinitely more complex, and the ever-increasing influx of immigrants from various



Chapter 5.  African Americans and their vernacular English 

backgrounds has complicated the situation both in terms of linguistic resources available and in terms of what different racial and ethnic categories mean in the U.S.-American context (Kretsedemas 2008; Imoagene 2017: 141). The relationship between AAs and Africans has been recognized by many scholars as complex and full of tensions and misunderstandings (Ogbaa 2003; Johnson 2008; Imoagene 2015, 2017). The origin of these tensions can be traced all the way back to the transatlantic slave trade, when West Africans of different ethnic origins were taken – either sold by other Africans or captured directly by the White colonizers  – and brought to the “New World” as slaves in a process in which they were “amalgamat[ed]” into one group and came to be “generally known as ‘black’” from that time on (Johnson 2008: 189). The fact that many of the soon-to-be-slaves were sold off by people who AAs suppose were “their brethren” is a persisting source of bitterness and trauma. Most AAs seem to be unaware of the possibly mitigating circumstance that race was at the time not seen as a category uniting people on the African continent, which has always been divided along ethnic rather than racial lines. Therefore, the individuals sold off were, in fact, probably considered strangers and foreigners, irrespective of their skin color (2008: 191). Several further points of disagreement are identified by Sierra Leonean journalist Conteh (2013), seeking explanations for what he sees as “a huge chasm between African-Americans and African immigrants in the United States”. Conteh identifies three main differences between the groups, created by different backgrounds, experiences, and “deep misconceptions, sometimes fueled by the U.S. media” (2013). He argues that AAs and Africans differ, firstly, in their attitudes toward White people: AAs are taught about the history of slavery over and over again, and many of them have experienced racism and oppression by Whites all their lives, whereas today’s Africans’ pre-migration experiences with Whites are likely to have been restricted to mostly positive encounters with “Peace Corps volunteers, missionaries, doctors or teachers” (Conteh 2013). Oppressors in contemporary Africa are often Black themselves, in the form of corrupt or despotic leaders, who, in turn, are rather celebrated than criticized among AAs, who traditionally lack access to power and status in the American society (Ayittey 1999: 287–289). Conteh (2013) reports AAs to “look down on those African immigrants who express respect or admiration for White Americans”. Secondly, many Africans’ general lack of interest in getting involved in the ongoing debates and activism against racial discrimination in the USA angers many AAs, who are, in Conteh’s views, keen to perceive racism even in situations in which it is not unambiguously there. In the same vein, thirdly, Conteh sees a difference in the ways the two groups react to difficulties. African immigrants come to the USA with a strong motivation to succeed economically and do not

 World Englishes on the Web

let adversity or criticism put them down easily because they “know who they are”, while Conteh suggests there is among AAs “a tendency to blame slavery for most of the problems they face today” (2013). While Conteh (2013) aims to understand and clarify motives on both sides, the point of view is still clearly that of an African immigrant, visible particularly in how all the suggestions how the situation could be improved on involve AAs changing their behavior. However, it seems to be a wider understanding among immigrants in the USA that AAs are wasting opportunities “whining about past injustices rather than focusing upon succeeding in a marvelous land that offers such vast material comfort and reward” (Johnson 2008: 193; cf. Imoagene 2017: 114). This view was expressed by many of Johnson’s interviewees, but the author himself lists it under the various “misunderstandings” between the two groups (2008: 194). Strikingly, while most AAs in Pew Research Center’s (2007) survey “believe that anti-black discrimination is still pervasive in everyday life”, 53% of them nonetheless think that unsuccessful Blacks are “mainly responsible for their situation”, which testifies to a widening gap between middle-class and lower-class AAs. On the other hand, AAs may struggle to grasp the persisting effects of colonialism in Africa (Johnson 2008: 194–195). Mwakikagile (2007: 20–21) emphasizes the role of Africa in the AfricanAmerican imagination as a “motherland” with which many identify. As ethnicity is not a salient category for AAs in the same way it is for many Africans, they might more readily see all Blacks “as one people” (Mwakikagile 2007: 80). Still, Alim (2004b: 70) points out that for every African American with a positive view of Africa, there is one whose views are based on “Eurocentric miseducation and the racist media portrayals”, causing strong prejudice. Based on interviews with 75 second-generation U.S.-Nigerians, Imoagene reports that “[e]very respondent […] said they experienced discrimination from African Americans”, in the form of “teasing, ridicule, and social ostracism”, with a lasting impact (2017: 56, 68). AAs were experienced as even more hostile than Whites (2017: 58). In general, however, Imoagene (2015: 182, 2017: 60) suggests there has been a general improvement since the turn of the millennium in how AAs view Nigerians and other Africans, caused by African immigrants’ ever-increasing numbers and “cultural presence” in the United States. A fairly optimistic view is also taken by Ogbaa (2003), who describes the relationship with AAs as part of a larger story of Nigerian integration in the USA in the 20th century, emphasizing experiences that have brought the two groups closer together. These include the warm reception received by the first African immigrants from the 1920s till the 1980s, seen as “long-separated family members”, the simultaneous successful political struggles



Chapter 5.  African Americans and their vernacular English 

on both continents in the 1960s, for independence in Africa and civil rights in America, or the mutual appreciation of and interest in each other’s cultures, in terms of entertainment, cuisine, or fashion (2003: 111–114). Ogbaa deems the “overall intergroup relations” in the early 21st century “very good” (2003: 116). Unfortunately, this suggested harmony is often not borne out on the individual level in how Nigerians on NL position themselves in relation to AAs. Their attitudes are often marked by negativity, a sense of superiority, or even hostility. Widely circulating stereotypes about AAs associate them with the ghetto22 and gangsters, and assign them negative characteristics from poor work ethic and ignorance to rudeness and violence. These are essentially the same “one-dimensional” negative stereotypes about Blacks that Embrick and Henricks’s (2013) fieldwork discovered at a predominantly White workplace. Croom (2015: 144) points out there are also positive stereotypes associated with Blackness, quoting Czopp and Monteith’s (2006: 235, 243) findings about Blacks being considered athletically, musically, sexually, and socially highly competent. However, the negative stereotypes prevail, and since Africans are often lumped together with AAs, Nigerians might be targeted and disadvantaged by the same stereotyped perceptions. Nigerian immigrants to the United States are generally strongly motivated to climb upward on the socioeconomic ladder and want to carefully avoid being associated with the Black underclass. Unfortunately, in the process of maintaining their separate identity, Nigerians often participate in distributing generalizations with racist motivations. As prejudiced statements are mainly interesting for their prevalence rather than their specific contents, one example shall suffice.

(1) Thread: Reparations For Africa About Slavery: they Are Doing Their Best To Ignore It !, 2009; User #95307, M, USA […] African Americans should first of all attempt to rise economically in the US and stop being synonymous with crime, drugs, miseducation and dysfunctional family households before they begin to talk about being an example for Africans. […]

.  Domonoske (2014) traces the development of the term ghetto from its original meaning as the “quarter in a city, chiefly in Italy, to which the Jews were restricted” (OED Online 2019d), to a term of race and poverty, designating “slum areas that weren’t mandated by law but that were limited to a single group of people because of other constraints”, further reduced to a synonym of “poverty and poor behavior” (Domonoske 2014). Smitherman (2000: 144–145) connects the ghetto with AAs and explains how the connotation of poverty has only emerged in the past few decades and how the ghetto still plays some role “as the symbolic site of African American cultural authenticity and ‘real’ Blackness”.

 World Englishes on the Web

There is even a specifically Nigerian derogatory term for AAs: akata is a word of Yoruba origin, initially referring to ‘a fox, feral cat or wild animal’ (Heyd 2014: 43). Heyd describes akata as “a term of othering” which can be applied to strangers or foreigners, emigrated Nigerians, or AAs, and “almost always carries a negative connotation” (2014: 43). It seems akata may carry different meanings for Nigerians in Nigeria and the USA, but in an overwhelming majority of cases, it refers to AAs. It appears in 2,888 documents in my corpus. There are different negative beliefs about each gender, but African-American men seem to have a particularly bad reputation. Many Nigerians believe AAs have fundamentally different  – inferior  – values, especially concerning family, marriage, and child-rearing (Imoagene 2017: 118). This is epitomized in the AAVE term baby daddy, referring to ‘a child’s father, generally one not married to the child’s mother and considered insignificant’ (Smitherman 2000: 59), which Nigerians pair with AAs. (2) Thread: [username]’s Imperfection, 2006; User #61411, F, USA […] I am only referring to the culture of babymama and baby papaism with no thought of any permanent union. […] I still stress that that is the main problem with the AA soceity

However, when the perceived differences between the two groups are conceived of in terms of culture rather than values, statements tend to be less judgmental.

(3) Thread: Africa And African-americans: How Deep Is The Resentment?, 2010; User #82419, M, NGR I dont think there is any resentment. Different people, different cultures, different ways of life, different experiences. […]

Comments expressing unconditionally positive attitudes toward AAs are few and far between. What one encounters quite frequently, however, is the point that these hostile views are stereotypes and generalizations, and the negatively evaluated characteristics ascribed to AAs do not apply to all of them. Imoagene (2017: 138) found perceptions to interact with constant judgments of class, so that secondgeneration U.S.-Nigerians are comfortable around middle-class AAs. (4) Thread: To Date a Black American, 2005; User #96389, F, USA It really truly bothers me when someone says, “African American’s are this or that” when really you can’t speak that way toward any one group. There are exceptions to all of these biased judgements we put on others. It really needs to stop. […]

One would expect people with first-hand experience of and personal ties with AAs to issue fewer stereotyping, antagonistic blanket statements. See, for instance,



Chapter 5.  African Americans and their vernacular English 

the U.S.-born User #105841, who, based on her own experiences, decides to voice against the negative views circulating on NL.

(5) Thread: What Is Wrong With Dating Or Marrying An African American Man?, 2006; User #105841, F, USA I am currently dating an African American man, but what I want to know is why is there such a commotion about “akata”. There are plenty of bad ones, but there are good ones. […]

Evaluating the relations between the two groups, one finds descriptions of suspicion, competition, and dislike – unsurprising, considering the general negativity toward AAs. The hostility seems to be at least to an extent reciprocal, as AAs have their own prejudices against “continental Africans”.

(6) Thread: How Do Africans Really Feel About African Americans ?, 2008; User #23369, M, UK and NGR […] negative stereotype from one end breeds negative stereotype from the other,when an african american calls me a monkey and africa or tells me to go home as if this is their home then ill take it personal and bring out his/ her negatives […]

Culprits for what one member calls a “very big gap between the two groups” are sought, for example, in the media, White “brainwashing”, the disprivileged position of AAs in the American society, or the painful shared history of slavery. Example 7 shows the view of an African American who grew up with a Nigerian stepfather and has extensive connections to the Nigerian-American community in New York.

(7) Thread: Africa And African-americans: How Deep Is The Resentment?, 2010; User #148259, F, USA Speaking as someone who knows both sides of the aisle, I’ll say; We (most African-Americans) dont give two hoots about Africans from the motherland. BUt, it has been my experience that most Africans think (for some unfathomable reasons) that we are beneath them and that they are somehow better. i guess u can blame the media for this!

At this point, however, it is necessary to emphasize that the view that the intergroup relationship is poor is not one that echoes from the NL community unanimously. Table 3 contains a selection of comments that report good rapport and mutual appreciation, or at least downplay the alleged antagonism. However, it is notable that all commenters are evidently aware of the relationship being generally perceived as hostile as they refer to the situation as “animosity”, “drama”, “resentment”, or “beef ”, the last being an old AAVE term for ‘conflict’, popularized in hiphop culture (Smitherman 2000: 65). Extracts collected in such thematic tables are snippets rather than entire posts.

 World Englishes on the Web

Table 3.  Positive and neutral views of the intergroup relationship A

The so-called animosity isn’t that bad please

(2010; #66533, M)

B

As someone who is mixed with Igbo and African American, I must say that there is some resentment in both communities. You will hear derogatory remarks coming from both groups. But I don’t think it is outright resentment. Africans who were raised in America tend to blend in with Black Americans so they do not have much of a problem. And many Black American women are attracted to Africans. I think this little drama is way overblown.

(2010; #128904, M)

C

As for the AA vs Africans beef,i say sheet your swords,young Nigerians are inspired by and look up to african American culture and music,while most young and old African Americans i meet,dream about visiting the motherland someday.

(2006; #62179, M)

Extract B brings us to a further central topic in the context of Nigerian–AfricanAmerican relations, relevant as a potential outcome of language contact as well as from the point of view of authenticity. That is the question of whether and how Black immigrants try to conform or accommodate to, or even become assimilated into, the African-American population upon their arrival in the United States or later. The accommodation process may include becoming “socially, culturally, linguistically and often religiously distanced from [one’s] ‘homeland’” (Koser 2003b: 9). As Kent points out, [m]any immigrants consciously maintain the dress, language, and other aspects of their homelands to affirm their ‘otherness’ [… b]ut many immigrants, and especially their children and grandchildren, embrace elements of U.S. culture. Through this interaction, both the immigrants and the U.S.-born population are affected.(Kent 2007: 3)

The phenomenon is discussed in threads such as “They Think Acting Westernized Will Get Them Attention. Funny!”, and “Is It Necessary To ‘try’ And Adapt An American,west Indian Or British Accent ?”, but references to cultural – particularly linguistic and sartorial – accommodation appear throughout the forum, represented either as shameful inauthenticity or an understandable fact. In most cases, such behavior is attributed to others; rarely does one admit to doing it oneself. The two alternatives to assimilation are highlighting one’s non-American immigrant identity or adopting a “hyphenated” identity as a Nigerian-American (Waters 1999). Admission to any group other than the proximal hosts is very unlikely. Extracts A and B in Table 4 refer to full assimilation in the second generation, whereby a person born in the USA to Nigerian parents is seen, or even self-identifies, as African-American, whereas extract C describes accommodation affecting behavior but not necessarily self-perception.



Chapter 5.  African Americans and their vernacular English 

Table 4.  Accounts of accommodation and assimilation A

you can join AA within one generation. If I end up settling here permanently, then my kids will probably considered by most to be AA.

(2011; #42805, M)

B

I know around my way, the majority of the American born and raised African kids---- mind’s well be just plain ol AfricanAmericans cause that’s what they feel most comfortably expressing themselves as, and being referred as, ESPECIALLY Igbo and other South East Nigerian-American kids; they seem to melt into the greater African-American populous super quick from what I’ve observed.

(2006; #70574, M)

C

Quite common, among Naija men. They want to be like gangstas, (2007; #10991, M) speak ebonics, wear hoods, listen to rap and just copy the lifestyles of some African American men. It boils down to inferiority complex, and the chance to ‘fit in’ with the AA group.

Various reasons are suggested for such behavior. One recurrent view, seen in extract C, posits that taking up practices associated with AAs, such as AAVE or rap music, has as its ulterior motive a lack of self-worth and the belief that Nigerian cultures and identities are inferior to American ones. The implication is that a proud Nigerian would not behave so. Describing such conduct with the verb copy is a common de-authenticating move. Table 5 presents more views on (chiefly linguistic) accommodation or assimilation by Nigerians in both the USA and the UK, featuring several possible further explanations for this behavior. Table 5.  Reasons for accommodation A

I don’t think some of us act “westernized”. After some time it becomes very much a part of who you are. Does it make you any less Nigerian[confused emojis]?? NO.

(2009; #50516, M)

B

lots of nigerians overseas will try to sound american or british. Its amusing to listen to them. I guess they do it for acceptance or something. They insist that’s the only way they can be understood when they speak. They just sound demented. I just think it would be really absurd if every single person on earth sounded american or british or western. Diversity is beauty.

(2007; #24811, F)

C

hey guys listen, some peeps try to adapt the british accent for economic reasons. it is obvious that if you go looking for jobs, during interviews, those with a lil bit of the british accent have some advantage. it’s not as if we dont like our own accent. i speak with my accent which i’m proud of, but when i’m at work, i use the british accent to attend to customers and to communicate with colleagues and superiors. somehow it seems more progress is made with their accent(which is not fair though)

(2007; #100915, M)

(Continued)

 World Englishes on the Web

Table 5. (Continued) D

Well personally I think. That the “Gangster” Stereotype is one that influences people all around the world, it’s not so much about wanting to become Black American or like a Black American but more so in trying to adopt something refreshingly Hip. Jazz was basically created by AAs, but there are Americans(White) in America that practically live Jazz. Wearing a Top hat and listening to Classical Music in an attempt to culture yourself Is no different from listening to Rap, whilst wearing a hood. It’s not about trying to be something you’re no but rather about been influenced by something you cherish.

(2007; #3788, M)

E

they don’t want to seem/look FOB (fresh off the boat) fitting in with mainstream african americans […] peer pressure affects teens and youth more significantly.

(2007; #20935, F)

In A, accommodation is presented as a natural process one goes through during an extended stay in a new country, and as compatible with a Nigerian identity. It stems from a thread “They Think Acting Westernized Will Get Them Attention. Funny!”, where acting is a de-authenticating term. User #50516 himself is a Nigerian émigré in the USA and a competent user of AAVE, so his post may be partly in self-defense. Extract B refers to the intelligibility argument – the idea that if one’s accent diverges from the host society’s norms, locals might not be able to comprehend it, which is understandably frustrating for everyone involved. However, User #24811 is not convinced by this line of reasoning, maintaining that the accent cannot be changed and one only makes a fool of oneself trying. Moreover, she is disheartened by how such dynamics diminish linguistic diversity, which she sees as inherently valuable. Extract C shows understanding for accommodation in the British context, claiming it has nothing to do with dislike or shame for one’s own ways of speaking but might result from mere pragmatic acceptance of the professional advantages of mastering a prestigious native-speaker variety, such as British English. This user deems it acceptable to approximate an other’s accent in professional contexts, and he admits to doing it as well. The remark about the situation not being “fair” reveals his awareness of the fact that different languages and varieties, despite the mobilizing effects of globalization, are not equal, or equally mobile (Blommaert 2005, 2010; see also Section 3.2). Educated Nigerian language repertoires, which are highly valuable commodities on Nigerian soil, do not grant their owners similar access to the middle class at the centers of the English-speaking world, such as in London (Blommaert 2005: 72). Accommodation toward a locally prestigious



Chapter 5.  African Americans and their vernacular English 

dialect need not mean more than acknowledging this cruel sociolinguistic fact. However, AAVE being an overtly stigmatized code, this reason does not apply to U.S.-Nigerians taking up African-American ways of speaking. Therefore, one has to look further for possible motives for this. One reason is offered in extract D, which points out that people worldwide are attracted to aspects of African-American popular culture (cf. Spears 2014a: 103). The Australia-based User #3788 suggests that many admire the stereotypical gangsta rapper persona, which comes with certain sartorial, music, and linguistic choices, as portrayed in music videos and cinema. #3788 argues that Nigerians mimicking gangsta rappers do not try to shed their Nigerian identity and be African-American instead but selectively include facets of globally recognizable cultural phenomena in their own identity practices – performing the identity of a Nigerian rap fanatic. This can be done by immigrants in the USA as well as hiphop aficionados in Nigeria. This hypothesis is compatible with Eckert’s (2008b) and Benor’s (2010) suggestion that the adoption of (linguistic) symbols associated with an ethnic group need not index ethnic belonging but, for instance, personae stereotypically associated with the ethnicity, such as being a hip-hop head. In D, the same idea is applied to lifestyle choices, including, but not restricted to, linguistic behavior. Finally, in E, a young observer suggests that adolescents especially might try to change their behavior in order to avoid standing out. There is an appeal to belonging to the mainstream, which in some cases, such as at Black schools, is formed by AAs. A degree of accommodation might be preferred to coming across as an uninformed newcomer. In addition to FOB (‘fresh off the boat’) in E, the community employs another, specifically Nigerian abbreviation for this undesired identity: JJC (‘Johnny Just Come’), identified in Urban Dictionary as “Nigerian slang” for ‘someone who is naive or new to a situation/place’ (2006c).23 Adopting linguistic resources from North American Blacks can be part of the identity process of “becoming Black” that African immigrants undergo when entering a society of White hegemony where their skin color suddenly is marked and consequential and they are from the beginning – whether they want or not – “imagined, constructed, and thus treated as Blacks by hegemonic discourses and groups” (Ibrahim 2003: 170). Section 6.2.3.1 contains examples of Nigerian immigrants using AAVE as a racial statement, to highlight their identity as Blacks in a way

.  This is not an entirely novel phrase; it occurred, for instance, in Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English (1994: 184), however, to refer to a young female “with lovely pointed breasts”.

 World Englishes on the Web

that is only relevant in societies as divided along the color line as the United States regrettably still is. Accommodation and the discourses it sparks highlight the complexity and difficulty of identity choices migrants worldwide have to make. To what extent can one accommodate to the host society without being perceived as inauthentic? Which groups does one want to be associated with? Which groups might one be able to fit in? Language use is one major means for managing such identity construction processes (e.g., Le Page & Tabouret-Keller 1985). Even the categories themselves are not stable, as Kretsedemas (2008: 827) suggests that the meaning of “African American” as an ethnic label could be changing with the recent masses of African immigrants arriving in the USA. The next section explores Nigerians’ perceptions of AAVE in order to gain a better understanding of possible motives behind the appropriation of AAVE resources, or the reasons for refraining from such practices. 5.2  Attitudes toward AAVE: “ibonics is identity for an african american” Various appellations have been used for what is here referred to as “African-American Vernacular English” (Green 2002: 6). This terminological choice follows some recent grammars of African-American speech, such as Wolfram (2008b, 2020). The most widespread label for African-American language among non-linguists is “Ebonics” (Spears 2014a: 104). It is also the preferred term on Nairaland, where it occurs in circa 500 posts, while other expressions occur at most two dozen times each. Most linguists, however, avoid this emotionally laden term (Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 2006: 211). Mere “African-American English” will not do either, as this study focuses on non-standardized (vernacular) features used by AAs. In fact, standardized Englishes are usually described in terms of absence of stigmatized social or regional features rather than as possessing specific prestige features (Wolfram & SchillingEstes 2006: 12). Hence, even though there are also several standardized forms of African-American English, they differ from standardized American English “most notably [in] pronunciation” (Spears 2014a: 101) and are, therefore, less relevant in this investigation of written communication. When reference is made to AAVE here, it means any non-standardized grammatical, lexical, or orthographic features found in the speech or writing of many, although not all, AAs. Earlier scholars estimated the pervasiveness of AAVE among the African-American population between 80 and 90 percent (Smitherman 1977: 2; Dillard 1972: 229); nowadays, there seems to be less willingness to put forward any concrete figures.



Chapter 5.  African Americans and their vernacular English 

Despite persistent linguist efforts since the 1960s to produce and disseminate information about AAVE as a valid and rule-governed system, it is admittedly still a highly stigmatized variety in the U.S.-American context, the criticism not infrequently stemming even from within the African-American community (LippiGreen 2012: 208). Even though critics typically point to specific grammatical or phonological patterns as problematic, Lippi-Green reminds us that at its core, the issue is not linguistic at all  – the American mainstream society feels uneasy in the face of AAVE because it is “tangible and irrefutable evidence that there is a distinct, healthy, functioning African American culture which is not white, and which does not want to be white” (2012: 209). Although one would expect this racial bias to not play the same role when other Blacks evaluate AAVE, the general anti-AAVE ambience seems to affect Nigerian perceptions as well. There are, however, also forces pulling in the opposite direction, making AAVE attractive. Spears (2014a: 103) notes that also some non-AAs speak African-American English, either by virtue of having grown up in African-American communities or having acquired the variety later. He suggests that the two most likely motives for learning and using AAVE are an attraction to “African American popular culture (e.g., hip-hop, the ‘gangsta’ lifestyle portrayed in rap music videos, the lifestyle of television shows, ‘urban fashion,’ etc.)” and/or “close personal relationships”, such as marriages, with AAs (Spears 2014b: 103). Ibrahim (2003: 177) found rap music and hip-hop culture to be crucial loci for African immigrants in Canada to acquire stylized AAVE, especially in the case of young males. An attraction to aspects of African-American popular culture (there is no one uniform “African-American culture” but several cultures with “a shared core” [Spears 1998: 247]) and personal ties are certainly both potential reasons for some Nigerians to want to learn and use AAVE, too. I will now describe Nigerian attitudes toward AAVE as reflected in metalanguage on the Nairaland forum. As one might expect, AAVE carries many of the same connotations as AAs do. Phrases such as “American ghetto Ebonics”, “gangsta Ebonics speaking ghetto”, or “Ebonics and street language” show the connection perceived between AAVE and “ghetto” life. It is also frequently coupled with hip-hop culture. These three – AAVE, street culture, and hip-hop – are intimately connected in the eyes of African Americans, too (Alim 2003), but they may be presented in a positive as well as negative light, as something pathological from the ghetto or as a vital source of Black authenticity. One common opinion is that using AAVE is appropriate in certain contexts, such as informal interactions with friends or family, but constitutes a problem if it is the only variety one has access to. This acknowledges AAVE’s identity and cultural value but also its marginalized, non-prestigious role in the U.S.-American society.

 World Englishes on the Web

(8) Thread: Ebonics: Is It Affecting You?, 2006; User #40656, F, USA ibonics is identity for an african american. like varnacular, ibonics is spoken by those who choose to speak it. one problem though is that most of them (quite annoyingly i think) use it when trying to write formal english, they cant distinguish. […]

In such instances, it is not primarily AAVE that is seen as a problem but the lack of competence in standardized forms of American English. In fact, AAs themselves are also painfully aware of the practical need24 to master standardized English alongside their own variety in order to succeed in the U.S.-American society, with feelings toward this “rang[ing] from sober utilitarianism and resignation to righteous anger” (Lippi-Green 2012: 196). AAVE might be considered a useful resource for Nigerians in certain contexts, as seen in this description of a linguistic repertoire. (9) Thread: Adaure Achumba And Her Accent, 2009; deleted account, NGR […] For your info, i spent over a decade in the states. I can speak ibonics like tomorrow will never come. I just don’t do it all the time. I do it when i am with african americans. I speak regular american english when the situation demands it. I speak my naija english all the time now. […]

It is mainly in these terms that Nigerians might admit to speaking AAVE themselves: as a choice in limited environments. However, for example in educational settings, it is seen as “a mistake” and “a problem”, as Example 10 shows. (10) Thread: Ebonics: Is It Affecting You?, 2006; User #7828, F, USA hey, i don’t kow if any one has this problem too, well i speak english fluently, ofcourse, but i also speak ibonics with some of my friend. (Ebonics is the popular african american way of talking). but i have come to realize that its becoming to affect my english writing skills. For example, if i wanted to write “we were dancing”. i would write “we was dancing” and this happens to me in my english papers and essay. but i think i catch my mistake most of the time. […]

It may be noted that this user does not employ “we was” on NL (“we were” occurs ten times), so she seems to consider the forum a context where AAVE usage needs to be “corrected”. Moreover, some Nigerians recognize the cultural and identity value of AAVE. This awareness might be facilitated by comparisons with Nigerian Pidgin  – a

.  One should not be mistaken here: this practical need is a direct consequence of White hegemony and inherently racist. See, for example, Alim and Smitherman’s (2012) sharp discussion of President Barack Obama’s language use and the American racial politics.



Chapter 5.  African Americans and their vernacular English 

t­raditionally stigmatized language in the Nigerian context  – as is done in this evocative contribution by a U.S.-Nigerian male: (11) Thread: Nigga, 2009; User #8624, M, USA […] You cannot deny that broken english affords a better bonding and alliance than does english grammar. Americans generally find Queen’s grammar too formal and inadequate for full demonstration of inner emotions. Blacks generally…the ones that are comfortable in their exotic nature, not wanting to be who they are not… find comfort in language expressions that gives full outlet for the exhibition of how we feel inside. Broken…Patoi…Ebonics… […]

Here, AAVE is seen as appropriate for informal “bonding and alliance” with one’s intimates, and as a true-to-oneself expression of a Black identity (cf. Coupland’s [2001: 415] language of “personal authenticity” and “authentic cultural membership”) on a par with Nigerian Pidgin (“Broken”) and Jamaican Creole (“Patoi”, conventionally Patois). All in all, one finds both appreciative and rejecting evaluations of AAVE. Commenters with positive attitudes “like the sound of Ebonics” or “love seeing typing in hood slangs”. Hostile views link it to a lack of education or intelligence, or foster the old idea – disproved long ago by linguists – of AAVE as grammarless, “butchered” or “improper lazy English”. One matter of debate is whether AAVE should be seen as an African language and a display of African heritage, or quite the opposite. In conclusion, views toward AAVE on NL are as heterogeneous as the community expressing them; however, the majority tend toward negative perceptions. Still, it would be simplistic to assume that people with negative attitudes do not employ any AAVE or that all those with favorable attitudes employ the same components of it. It is vital to look beyond this starting point of attitudes and ideologies and to explore which concrete AAVE resources are appropriated by Nigerians in specific communicative situations and how, in order to reveal their potential for identity and (de-)authentication work in this community. This is the topic of Chapter 6, which discusses AAVE usage at length. Before that, however, the chosen reference works on AAVE grammar and lexicon will be introduced along with a catalog of morphosyntactic features that occur in this book.

5.3  Linguistic features of AAVE Since the starting point is individual repertoires, it was not necessary to restrict the investigation to a closed list of features, but there was openness for any AAVErelated form to be detected and included in the study. Nonetheless, one cannot

 World Englishes on the Web

escape from relying on specific reference works to judge which resources might be associated with AAs. For detecting African-American influence in the areas of syntax and morphology, I rely on three main sources. Green’s (2002) monograph is targeted linguists and teachers, and includes detailed discussions of, for instance, the many verbal markers of AAVE (see Section 6.2.3). An even more extensive inventory of AAVE morphosyntax is found in the electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English (eWAVE) (Kortmann, Lunkenheimer & Ehret 2020). The database distinguishes between three varieties of AAVE: urban and rural AAVE, both based on Wolfram’s publications (2008b, 2008a), and earlier AAVE, described by Kautzsch (2020). This again alerts us to the fact that AAVE is not a uniform variety but rather “a cluster of regional and social varieties” (Spears 2014a: 102). The third reference work is an earlier description of urban AAVE by Wolfram for Schneider et al.’s (2004) handbook series. In it, Wolfram makes a further, useful classification of AAVE structures into “new and intensifying”, “receding”, and “stable”, and explicitly compares the urban AAVE feature inventory to not only rural and earlier AAVE but also Southern and Northern European-American English varieties (2004: 127–130). These main sources are complemented by a number of studies focusing on more restricted sets of features, such as Spears’s (2002, 2007) work on AAVE communicative practices and Alim’s (2004b) sociolinguistic and ethnographic study on intra-speaker stylistic variation in response to different addressees in one African-American community. Wolfram (2004) and eWAVE (Kortmann, Lunkenheimer & Ehret 2020) are useful for determining which features are actually distinctively AAVE vis-à-vis other varieties of English. Differences in how AAs and White Americans speak are much more pronounced in the North than in the South and when AAVE speakers are compared to the upper rather than the lower classes (Fasold 1981; Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 2006: 213–214). The topic of unique versus shared features is highlighted below in Tables 6 and 7: they list the syntactic and morphological features of (urban) AAVE that occur in this book, differentiating between distinctive and non-distinctive features. “Distinctive” refers to structures identified in previous studies as frequent in AAVE and not associated with any other linguistic code relevant for this project. These are, as represented in eWAVE, mainly colloquial American English (AmE) (Simon 2020), NigE (Taiwo 2020), and NigP (Faraclas 2020), but Jamaican Creole (JamC) (Patrick 2020), and Jamaican English (JamE) (Sand 2020) are also taken into consideration. Moreover, European-American Vernacular English (EAVE) as described by Wolfram (2004) is included. “Nondistinctive” features are commonly used by AAs but have also been attested in one or several of the other relevant codes. Fasold (1981: 166–167) makes a similar division, additionally pointing out that AAVE shares many “unmarked” features with



Chapter 5.  African Americans and their vernacular English 

standardized English. The tables do not read as a comprehensive list of features of AAVE but as a study-specific catalog. Terminology is adapted selectively and examples are from my data. Table 6.  Distinctive non-standardized features of AAVE in this study Feature

Examples

habitual or iterative invariant be

Everyone be crackin’ up each time

remote past been → cf. past been in NigP

she been sick

remote past resultant been done

Jay-z been done told u

ain’t for did not

my momma ain’t raise no fool

ain’t for do not

I ain’t knw Russell Simmons

absence of auxiliary have

You been doing this for soo long

absence of copula be before noun phrases

we sisters

absence of copula be before locatives and prepositional phrases

They on iTunes; We in this 2gether

intensifying steady

[she] steady searchin’ for a valentine

possessive they

niggas mad cause they shit be unraveling

possessive you and y’all

There in lies yall problem

is for are

what you think we is ? legal secretarys ?; youse a practicing communist”

indignant come

he come tellin’ Niggas he hangin’ wit Celebs

associative plural an’ ‘em

me and tasha an em was hangin on the stoop

The distinctive features play an important role in the sense that they are relatively reliable indicators of connections with AAVE speakers, while non-distinctive features cannot on their own be unambiguously identified as AAVE-influenced. However, when non-distinctive features cluster or appear next to other AAVErelated features, it seems reasonable to assume an AAVE association – as far as asserting links between features and varieties makes sense (Section 3.3). As Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (2006: 218) point out, “[t]he uniqueness of AAVE lies more in the particular combination of structures that makes up the dialect than it does in a restricted set of potentially unique structures”. Table 7, with non-distinctive features, indicates for each feature which other codes pertinent to this study also display it, relying on eWAVE (Kortmann, Lunkenheimer & Ehret 2020) and its classification of features into “pervasive or obligatory” “A features” or “neither pervasive nor extremely rare” “B features” (the classes C and D, indicating the rarity and absence of a feature, respectively, do not qualify).

 World Englishes on the Web

Table 7.  Non-distinctive non-standardized features of AAVE in this study Feature

Examples

absence of progressive auxiliary be → A in NigE, NigP; B in JamE, JamC

nobody going to stop it

them for those → A in JamC; B in colloquial AmE

them boyz got what they deserved

multiple negation → A in JamC; B in colloquial AmE, JamE

this ain’t no diss

ain’t as negated form of have and be → B in colloquial AmE

you aint gotta ask me twice; i aint tryna impress you

don’t as 3sg present tense negation → B in colloquial AmE, JamC

she don’t really care

absence of 3sg present tense -s → A in NigP, JamC; B in JamE

I don’t give a fuck if she suspect shitt

absence of possessive -s → B in NigP; Southern EAVE

go and rekindle the flames with your baby mama

absence of copula be before adjective phrases → A in JamC; B in JamE

she sassy

perfect done → A in NigP, JamC; B in colloquial AmE

i don miss ma real naija girls

negative inversion → B in colloquial AmE

Can’t nobody be mad at me

futurate I’ma → EAVE

ima be back in about a hour

futurate finna → Southern EAVE

We finna rip they hearts out

2pl pronoun y’all → Southern EAVE

y’all always put a smile on my face

unmarked past form → A in NigP, JamC; B in colloquial AmE

babyboy sex me so good

benefactive dative → B in colloquial AmE, JamC

i became really depressed, got me a nine milli

regularized irregular plurals → Southern EAVE

How To Make Your Childrens African

was for were → EAVE

you thought we was together sincerely

In addition to grammatical features, one may expect AAVE lexical influence in the repertoires of some U.S.-Nigerians. Coleman (2014: 12) considers African-American culture and its increasing commercial value the global center from which the greatest number of slang expressions in English currently emanate and start



Chapter 5.  African Americans and their vernacular English 

spreading to other varieties and speaker groups on a worldwide scale. People such as the U.S.-Nigerians of this study and platforms such as Nairaland are important stepping stones in the process of new expressions making their way from the core of the Anglophone world toward the periphery – from Chicago to Lagos, from New York to Port Harcourt. Concerning lexis, it is more difficult to find comprehensive, up-to-date sources, as the vocabulary of a language is naturally much larger and more prone to change than its grammar. Classics, such as Dillard (1977) on vocabulary from the domains of sexuality, religion, music, and street life, only help with long-standing AAVE lexis. Smitherman’s dictionary of “words and phrases from the hood to the amen corner” (rev. ed. 2000) is likely to capture a significant part, if only a part, of the AAVE lexicon Nigerians might have come into contact with during the time period targeted in this project (2005–2014). It offers invaluable definitions of many AAVE expressions encountered in the data. Smitherman (2000) also comments on the phenomenon of elements crossing over from AAVE to the speech of European Americans, and indicates “crossover” terms as such. Informal expressions missing from Smitherman’s dictionary were inspected in the collectively-authored online slang dictionary project Urban Dictionary. It is not an authoritative source as anyone can add entries to it, but the reliability of a particular definition can be estimated based on a system of voting whereby visitors vouch for a definition or suggest it be removed. However, since votes may be given based on criteria other than lexicographical accuracy – such as humorous effect – Urban Dictionary definitions are to be taken with a pinch of proverbial salt. Moreover, information about ethnic or geographical distribution is available very sporadically and is similarly potentially unreliable. In addition to the mentioned sources, community reactions and metalinguistic comments on the forum are considered.

chapter 6

African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires This chapter describes the usage of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) resources by U.S.-Nigerians and the role of AAVE in the construction of diasporic Nigerian identities on the internet. The findings are based on qualitative analyses of interactions, individual repertoires, and specific linguistic features, supported by frequency counts of the latter, on the Nigerian web forum Nairaland. The analysis focuses on 50 selected U.S.-based users, but occasionally, it is extended to the entire Nairaland 2 corpus. The chapter begins by introducing the analytical concept of AAVE user types, and then the five user types found among the core 50, followed by detailed discussions of AAVE linguistic features and practices of AAVE usage. 6.1  User types The topic of U.S.-Nigerians’ AAVE usage will be approached from the point of view of user types, which represent generalizations that emerged in the course of examining individual user repertoires qualitatively. Even though each individual employs a unique set of linguistic resources (Blommaert & Backus 2012), it was nonetheless possible to identify recurring patterns and group the core 50 according to these. Five user types could be identified that differ in terms of quantity and quality of AAVE usage. They will be introduced briefly in order from the one exhibiting the richest AAVE influence to the one displaying the least. Although each member is assigned to one type, it must be borne in mind that social reality can never be sliced perfectly into categories; some individuals are prototypical members of a user type, whereas others fit one more marginally. Because of the fuzzy group boundaries as well as the non-probabilistic sampling technique used, one should not put too much weight on the specific numbers of participants assigned to each type. The numbers are given in Table 8 primarily to show that each group contains enough members to justify its existence, rather than to suggest that this distribution reflects the AAVE usage of U.S.-Nigerians in general – it does not, in important ways pointed out in Sections 4.2.4 and 6.1.1.

 World Englishes on the Web

Table 8.  Overview of AAVE user types User type

Type label

# of users

I

consistent expert

 5

II

inconsistent expert

11

III

occasional user

11

IV

minimal user

14

V

non-user

 9

6.1.1  User type I: Consistent experts The group relying most heavily on AAVE is labeled “consistent expert users”. This type is characterized by a pervasive usage of a wide variety of both grammatical and lexical AAVE features. Type I essentially shares their feature pool with type II but differs from them in terms of the extent of AAVE usage. For type I users, AAVE forms their main communicative style, and their forum contributions contain features associated with AAVE with few exceptions, and many of them are replete with AAVE influence. Some variation is permitted, of course, as one must remember that even fully competent AAVE speakers shift between styles depending, for example, on their interlocutors (Alim 2004b). It must be pointed out that this is the group where the sampling bias plays a role: these users were included in the study because they resort to AAVE heavily. Type I contains the lowest number of users, but it is still likely to be overrepresented with respect to all U.S.-Nigerians. For this reason, this user type is more relevant for the reactions it prompts from the other forum members than on its own as a repertoire. Such reactions, discussed in Section 6.2.1.2, have much to reveal about the relationship between AAVE and Nigerian identities and authenticities as seen by the Nairaland community. All type I experts are male. Considering the gender imbalance in the core 50 (28 males, 22 females) and the small size of this group, one should not draw conclusions too firmly from this observation. Nonetheless, an association of AAVE with maleness would fit together well with both these experts’ identity statements and the common stereotypes about AAs and their vernacular linking them to gangsters, ghettoes, and the predominantly male street culture. Nigerian AAVE experts are, of course, familiar with the stereotypes and need to position themselves in relation to them. Running counter to mainstream attitudes on NL, some expert AAVE users seem to perceive selected aspects of street culture as attractive and desirable, and they reflect upon  – and in many cases explicitly take up – “gangsta” and other related cultural labels in their online identity statements, as seen in these examples.



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

Table 9.  Expert users adopting identity labels from street culture A

What a bitchass nigga mayne!! Come try that shit hurr and we gon show u how real hood niggas do!!!

(2008; #133781, M)

B

Did I ever say I’m a gansta? Did I ever say I live in a ghetto? […] When I say I’m hood, it implies I’m figuratively married to the streets.

(2008; #147267, M)

C

The word Gangsta is rite U earn : I work fo’ [American record label] so I suppose I earned that . Some cats get their GANGSTA stutus for the street of Chi-town, Bronx , Queens , Philly etc they get that from the life they live. […] * If u wanna live here you need to be Hard* *Tell da Cops Fu** k U * […] Now that what I do and It makes me a CERTIFIED GANGSTA . Yo if you actin’ Gangsta and U earn it , Do ur thang playa ? I gat ur baq Leave dem Haters

(2006; #75863, M)

D

its nuthn mami, i gat it like dat thats what happens wen u get schooled by O.Gs

(2007; #71514, M)

E

I BEEN TRU SHIT THAT MAKE ME A G ‘I have been through difficult experiences. That makes me a gangsta’

(2007; #24837, M)

Extract A contains fairly straightforward identity work, with the identity claim (“real hood nigga”) aligned with the stances taken (aggressive, assertive) and the language used (AAVE lexis, grammar, and spelling). User #147267 in extract B, however, distances himself from actual ghettoes, insisting that his association with “the hood” is merely symbolic or aspirational. One may speculate whether the “gangsta” activities User #75863 brags about in C are also mere role-play. He makes an effort to authenticate this identity through his linguistic performance, employing AAVE lexicon, grammar, and spellings. In D, User #71514 positions himself as an apprentice gangster learning from “original gangsters”, perhaps to signal experience and maturity despite his young age. User #24837 from extract E is severely criticized for calling himself a “G” and using AAVE. He qualifies this identity claim in a long message, part of which is quoted as Example 12. In it, #24837 admits that his street-wise performance is partly identity play the internet enables (Turkle 1995). Nonetheless, “hood nigga” is an identity label relevant to his experience, and one he orients himself to. (12) Thread: 50 Cent Expressed Disappointment And Have Had A Change Of Plans, 2007; User #24837, M […] I DON’T LIKE GOING ARROUND TALKING ABOUT HOW HOOD I AM AND ALL THAT SHIT I DON’T ENJOY THAT SHIT,AIN’T NO HHOD NIGGA ON EARTH THAT WILL TELL U THAT HIS PROUD OF BEEN GHETTO OR HIS PROUD TO BE WHERE HIS FROM,SEE THAT’S WHY WHEN THIS RAPPERS GET MONEY THEY NEVER GO BACK TO THE HOOD CUZ THEY KNOW WHAT’S

 World Englishes on the Web

GOING ON OUT THERE,SO WHEN I TALK ABOUT THAT HOOD SHIT I AIN’T REALLY SERIOUS CUZ THIS IS INTERNET […]

Table 9 shows how some Nigerians employ AAVE and experiment in complex ways with identity labels and concepts such as “gangsta”, “hood”, and “streets”. Note that the label “African American” does not figure at all, but stances are taken toward the concept “gangsta”. This persona is stereotypically associated with AfricanAmerican males, and AAVE is employed to accomplish the identity projection. Maleness itself might be one main identity aspect that using AAVE implicates – for example, via personae such as gangsta, or acts such as assertive or uncensored speech (Spears 1998). Another notable fact about type I users is their rather low number of contributions that clearly goes against the general trend in the core 50. Again, the group is too small to make strong assertions, but this may point toward a tendency. I suggest one reason for the scarcity of posts from these users to be that their linguistic practices differ from the repertoires of most NL members to an extent that hampers their integration into the community. The interpersonal ties people forge on such Web 2.0 platforms are undeniably one of the biggest reasons for their popularity, but users resorting heavily to AAVE are not always well received on the forum (Section 6.2.1.2). This could in part explain the AAVE experts staying active on the forum for relatively short times and contributing fewer posts than many others. 6.1.2  User type II: Inconsistent experts The second AAVE user type is constituted by “inconsistent experts”, characterized by a wide variety of both grammatical and lexical AAVE features, but AAVE not occurring in all, or even most, of their posts. In terms of which AAVE features are present, the inconsistent experts’ writing is comparable to the consistent experts, but they resort to AAVE much less frequently, at chosen moments only. Eleven core users match this type the best. In order to situate their AAVE usage into their wider repertoires, let us examine a sample of metalanguage from type II users. It testifies to the heterogeneity of this group. In extract A, User #92464 recounts how he uses different codes in three distinct areas of life: mainly “proper”, standardized English at the university, Yoruba mixed with a little English in the home context, and uncensored English when pursuing his favorite pastime activity, “hoopin’” (‘basketball’). It is likely that “expletive-riddled English” refers to AAVE. Jara (‘an addition, bonus’) is of Hausa origin but has been borrowed to NigP and other Nigerian languages (Adesoji Babalola, personal



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

Table 10.  Inconsistent experts’ perceptions of their repertoires A

I speak whatever flies with me. In school, English all day … mostly proper English. Back home, yoruba all the way with a few jaras of English. When I’m hoopin’ with the niggaz, it’s all expletive-riddled English

(2010; #92464, M)

B

ah who cares for proper english anyway,i mean i am from nigeria and speak better english than most americans i come across (white asian latino and black. . )

(2007; #62179, M)

C

I could never pass for an AA…cause i still got that Unique Naija accent,so once i speak everyone knows he aint American

(2010; #62179, M)

D

I speak the language of james Brown,Fela Kuti,Muhammed Ali (called himself the prettiest.),and so on. .if u don’t think black is beautiful. .its your opinion,why do u have a problem with me voicing mine out. .hata.

(2006; #62179, M)

E

I give good and well polished shit from the hood

(2008; #147267, M)

F

#16978: B  ut stuffs u do sometimes amaze me, in that u were neva brought up in Naija! How come…? [confused emoji]

(2010)

#3092:    L  OL I’m asked that a lot [grin emoji] My Elders were surprised that Im not as americanized as they thought I would be [cheesy emoji] My parents are very very traditonal, and I grew up with it my entire life

communication, November 29, 2017). This metalinguistic report is backed up by his language use on the forum. In comments B–D, User #62179 claims a similarly wide repertoire. Though he asserts that standardized English poses no problem for him, his comments suggest that it is not his target variety but he prefers to speak what could be called Black English. This can be deduced from his list of linguistic idols: Brown was an African-American funk and soul musician; Kuti a Nigerian Afrobeat artist and pan-African activist; and Ali an African-American boxer and political activist. User #62179’s Black repertoire contains standardized NigE, NigP, informal AmE, and AAVE, particularly on the Rap Battle subforum (Section 6.2.2.1). User #147267 in extract E connects his language use with “the hood”, which in his case seems to stand for vulgarities, affected vocabulary, and AAVE expressions. This comment is part of his defense against criticism of his language practices, discussed following Table 21. Exchange F features a very different case. The first comment reacts to User #3092 using Igbo. In response, she explains she was raised in the United States

 World Englishes on the Web

but according to traditional Nigerian cultural norms, including being taught Igbo before English. Older Nigerians often marvel at her knowledge of Igbo as a second-generation immigrant. She also has a high competence in AAVE but the authenticating power of ethnic languages seems to be such that it overrides the negative authenticity effects of AAVE. The above comments claim and demonstrate very multilingual repertoires, often mentioning AAVE as one constituent. In Section 6.2.2, some contexts will be presented in which users who irregularly resort to AAVE are likely to do it. 6.1.3  User type III: Occasional users The third type, “occasional users”, is the most heterogeneous one. Their AAVE usage is not pervasive but not minimal either, and their repertoires are characterized by, in comparison to the experts, a restricted selection of AAVE linguistic – both grammatical and lexical  – features. For the most part, AAVE influence is sprinkled across their posts rather than heavily concentrated in specific contexts. Eleven members are placed in this user type. The occasional users tend to use AAVE as part of very varied language repertoires and informal styles. For example, User #10993 combines resources from AAVE, NigP, Yoruba, as well as minimally from several Romance languages and Jamaican Creole in her informal style full of emojis and creative orthography. In these excerpts, AAVE is bolded, NigP underlined and translated, and other noteworthy resources are highlighted with dotted underlining. Table 11.  User #10993’s informal multilingual style A

good for u , NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY [wink emoji] u sure say yah neighbours aint peeking ‘[…] are you sure that your neighbors aren’t peeking’

(2006)

B

i gat em dollars here u wan join am strip? ‘I’ve got those dollars here. Do you want to join him stripping?’

(2006)

C

its aight, so long as u don’t have any more feelings for her, aint nuffin wrong in being an active participant in the wedding sef (aiye n se ru e jooooo) aint nuffin new under the sun [laughter emoji] ‘[…] there is nothing wrong with even being an active participant in the wedding (life is hard please) this is nothing new under the sun’

(2006)

D

if he is cheating on me running around with some hootchie then amma be doing ma thang with a fine -ass younger boy-toy too [laughter emoji] no worries we go dey meet for house later [laughter emoji] do me, i do you God nor dey vex! [laughter emoji] ‘[…] we will be meeting at home later. What you do to me, I’ll do to you. God won’t be angry!’

(2007)



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

Table 11. (Continued) E

that yah boyfriend is having the fun of his life teee [cheesy emoji] heee [cheesy emoji] if na me ,if una get another sister na her turn remain in this love triangle, abi quadruple ni?. u should have limited ur relationship to just friendship what about famiglia fedelta thats family loyalty in italian ‘[…] if it were me, if you have another sister, it’s her turn to be in this love triangle, or is it a quadruple? […]’

(2006)

F

you under estimate the power of ma slap [grin emoji] believe me it ain’t gwaan be heavenly! ‘[…] it is not going to be heavenly!’

(2006)

G

my village “ [grin emoji] ” mucho romantico i tell y’all

(2008)

In addition to AAVE, these extracts contain NigP (words, phrases, and clauses in A–E), Yoruba (in brackets in C), Jamaican Creole (gwaan usually means ‘going on’ but here stands for ‘going to’), and unidiomatic minimal phrases in Spanish and Italian. Moreover, one may note the BrE spelling in , the double determiner “that yah” and the phrase “do me, I do you” typical of NigE, and the ample usage of emojis and expressive spellings and typography (upper case, an onomatopoeic depiction of laughter, and a blue font for the Italian phrase “famiglia fedelta”). #10993 is a translocal subject who employs an exceptionally multilingual yet noticeably truncated repertoire. She uses many simple AAVE features nonchalantly, without explicit commentary, as part of her playful informal digital writing. The same holds true for User #79385. The most salient characteristic in her writing is her extreme usage of non-standardized orthography. Here are a few of her posts containing AAVE: Table 12.  User #79385’s informal multilingual style A

immaa help u out rite hurr Ø meanss d guy ain’t droppin them papers [laughter emoji] e no get money ooo [laughter emoji] ‘I’m going to help you out right here. It means the guy is not spending money. He does not have money’

(2005)

B

c’mon y’all this is my girl rite hurr! we Ø sisters mehn!! so better recognizee

(2005)

C

yoo!! juss soo u know!! we ladiessss ain’t trippin 4 no smallie!! u wann know why?? cos we’v gatt class!! yeahh dawg! i fit continue oooo…i better hush!! ‘[…] I could continue […]’

(2005)

User #79385 employs some basic AAVE, lexis (betta recognize ‘to take notice of somebody’, paper ‘money’) (Smitherman 2000: 66, 224), and spellings suggestive of AAVE pronunciations interlaced with simple NigP, all realized creatively

 World Englishes on the Web

a­ ppropriating the English orthographic conventions. Many NLers react negatively to her style: they report difficulties in understanding her or suggest hers is not an appropriate way for a Nigerian to write. They associate her style with Americanness and Whiteness. Another type III AAVE user accused of inauthenticity and “trying to be African American” is #48876, a male born in the United States to Nigerian parents and raised between the two countries. He displays a wide stylistic variety from standardized English to informal, non-standardized, and multilingual styles, and occasionally resorts to AAVE lexis or grammar. Commenters call his writing “bad English”, or “fake ghetto twang”. However, in Table 13 below, #48876 suggests that the faultfinders are baselessly conflating his cursing and typographical errors with the ghetto (see also Table 107). Moreover, he argues that standard grammar is not necessary in such non-professional, anonymous settings (in C), and self-authenticates as Nigerian by referring to his recurrent visits there (in A). Extract D reveals his perception of his repertoire  – it combines Nigerian (“naija”) and urban American (“yankee”) male identities and styles but with poshness effectively being the opposite of the ghetto. The linguistic target mentioned is an African-American rapper. Table 13.  Metalanguage from User #48876 A

lol theres nothing ghetto about cursing and using bitch all the time. improper but not ghetto. so please respect yourself.i have traveled to and from nigeria more times than your family has probably entered a plane.

(2009)

B

MY ENGLISH ISN’T HORRIBLE ITS CALLED TYPOS MISPELLING DUE TO TYPING FAST.

(2009)

C

RELAX YOURSELF AS LONG AS I USE CORRECT GRAMMER WHEN NEEDED I WILL USE IT, but you are not paying me, nor do i kno you soooo

(2009)

D

lol I dont talk like that nikku – hes just straight ghetto im more of a naijaurbanized- yankeeboy with a “posh” swag. like p diddy

(2010)

These two cases show that even repertoires employing AAVE more moderately run the risk of being criticized and de-authenticated if they stray too far from standards. It seems that a repertoire need not contain an especially wide range of actual AAVE features to be perceived as targeting AAVE if it contains, for example, expletives or non-standardized spelling. This topic is returned to in Chapter 8. (13) Thread: Ebonics: Is It Affecting You?, 2006; User #6229, F […] I talk like that sometimes, u know when u trying to pull the “shaniqua” look. lol, But i’ve tried not to let it affect my school work. […]

Example 13 contains the last metalinguistic statement from this user type for now. User #6229’s writing style, typical for user type III, is highly informal and multilingual. She tends to produce short messages containing expressive spellings



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

imitating orality and other typographical irregularities. She uses AAVE occasionally for a persona she calls “shaniqua”. The most popular Urban Dictionary definitions agree that Shaniqua is a stereotypical “Black woman from the inner city” (2005b). Unfortunately for this study, #6229 does not specify in which situations this identity is desirable. Generally, the type III users tend to avoid African-American-related identity labels but merely use AAVE as one ingredient in their richly multilingual and informal CMC repertoires. 6.1.4  User type IV: Minimal users AAVE usage by the fourth user type, “minimal users”, comprises of employing a restricted set of lexical or grammatical AAVE features in a small portion of their posts. This is the largest group. Their individual repertoires contain all the highly popular features discussed in Section 6.2.6, and each of them additionally employs a handful of other AAVE resources. However, their usage tends to be characterized by non-expert practices, such as low frequencies of occurrence, or copying phrases from other users or popular culture. These and other practices of minimal usage are addressed in Section 6.2.5. Attitudes toward AAs and AAVE in this group tend to be negative or conflicted; for instance, User #43555 employs akata over 50 times to refer to AAs in a denigrating manner, and User #11340 defends AAs one moment only to vilify them the next. We see this also in metalanguage from this group, demonstrating their varying perceptions of their language repertoires and the role of AAVE therein. The excerpts again highlight the variety of personalities, motives, and communicative styles that can co-exist within a single user type. Table 14.  Minimal users’ perceptions of AAVE A

mehn, on my way back to [city], I and my boy were “randomly selected” at the airport for “further screening”… [angry emoji] was very unpleasant being practically strip searched down to the youknow-what. I guess we stood out like the true northerners we are, properly dressed and perfect english [tongue emoji].

(2010; #84871, F)

B

ive been made fun of countless times by A’A’s when i was younger and went to an all black school. Many A.A’s seem to think that by being smart and talking properly you are trying to act ‘white’

(2011; #11340, M)

C

This make me remember secondary school days when we try so hard to be little thugs by calling ourselves niggas and trying to “rap-talk”, all to get a girl’s attention.

(2007; #94085, M)

D

I speak ebonics most at time doesn’t mean I cannot communicate or did not do excellently well at school.

(2009; #48872, M)

E

Abeg, this dude topics are hilarious. I seriously do not want this character to die, he’s just too funny especially the AA imitation type of writing. LOL

(2010; #86008, F)

 World Englishes on the Web

In A, User #84871 self-identifies as a “Northerner” and rates her own English competence as “perfect”, distancing herself from Southern non-standardized English. She chooses her words with exaggerated decorum, substituting euphemistic “youknow-what” for underwear. Her performance on NL supports her claim of mastering standardized English, although most of her writing is rather informal; AAVE only plays a minor role in her repertoire. In B, User #11340 describes how in the Black space of his all-Black school, non-conforming behavior was penalized and de-authenticated by African-American peers as non-Black. In such a setting, Black immigrants might be expected to take up AAVE or even completely assimilate into the African-American population. However, #11340 chose to stay an outsider, and his repertoire today contains only minimal AAVE. His interpretation of the situation as him “being smart and talking properly” reflects the standard language ideology and unwarranted racist stereotypes of Black intelligence – thoughts not foreign to him in the rest of his writing either. More school-time reminiscences are found in extract C. A “thug” identity and “rap-talk” are very likely to be references to AAVE as a target variety. However, the lexeme try implies #94085 does not see his AAVE approximation as very successful. Moreover, he depicts this as a phase in the past, and his performance on NL supports this view. User #48872 in D reports using AAVE “most [of the] time”, but this alleged behavior hardly extends to the Nigerian forum, where he only produces highly popular or non-distinctive AAVE features and some instances of copula absence and was for were generalization. He fails to recognize one AAVE lexeme for ‘money’, replying to the instruction to “go sleep n make dat cheddar in d morning” with “I don’t eat cheddar”. Even though not fully-initiated into AA ways of speaking, he sees them as a part of his repertoire. Possibly, his ranking as a minimal user does not reflect his full knowledge of AAVE but only his performance on the forum, also influenced by considerations of audience and appropriateness. Finally, in E, User #86008 tries to de-authenticate another member who she does not believe to be a mixed American (Colombian and AA), as he claims, but a Nigerian trying to pass as an African American. However, she also seems entertained by that type of writing, showing again the potential of AAVE for amusement and pleasure. 6.1.5  User type V: Non-users The fifth and last AAVE user type is the one employing AAVE to the lowest degree, the “non-users”. Their forum interactions are marked by the absence of notable AAVE influence, apart from few non-distinctive features found in many



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

­ on-African-American AmE speakers’ repertoires, too. In some cases, the absence n of AAVE in their posts might be a matter of competence. However, some type V users have intimate ties to AAs through marriage, friendship, or dating. Their abstinence from using AAVE seems to have reasons other than lacking access to African-American speech. The next excerpts contain metalanguage from this group, first on AAVE. Table 15.  Metalanguage on AAVE by user type V A

ebonics is to communicate just as nigerian pidgin is to communicate. yeah both are considered to be used by illeterates. ebonics originated with african americans that are secluded in the ghetto. obviously their dialect will be diferent from the mainstream. african americans who don’t live in the inner cities etc usually don’t speak ebonics. I won’t advice anyone to go learn ebonics though. unless they don’t want job prospects or unless they’re moving into the innercity etc (it’s advicable to learn ebonics if you want to survive in these areas). By the way, all of the African American Friends i have save a very few ones SWEAR A LOT which i detest. […] Not that i don’t get al.ng with them (because i do!) I just wouldn’t date a guy who swears a lot.

(2007; #20935, F)

B

Akata ebonics suck to high heavens! [grin emoji]

(2010; #62485, M)

C

lol @ “nawl.” You gotta love African American vernacular sometimes.

(2011; #62738, M)

D

Even here in the US, such ghetto language is reserved for the low class, barely educated. The real upper middle class folks speak with crisp english. Till tomorrow i still have a difficult time understanding black people speak … with the whites i have absolutely no problem.

(2011; #515, M)

E

That is OBVIOUSLY a fake accent. That is the way african americans speak, is [#8347] an african-american or can she lay claim to have EVER been to america before? Puhlease.

(2005; #20935, F)

Extract A reveals User #20935’s attitude toward AAs and AAVE. She recognizes how natural it is that a separate linguistic code develops within the ethnic group and the value of AAVE as a vehicle of communication in certain communities. However, her associations are the same stereotyped ones encountered before: lack of education, unemployment, the poor inner city, futility, obscenity. #20935 socializes with AAs on a regular basis but there is no reason for her to adapt this stigmatized variety, as it does not support her aspirations of upward mobility. User #62485’s comment in B is plainly dismissive of AAVE, although the emoji suggests amusement. In C, another AAVE non-user reacts to a mere word, judging

 World Englishes on the Web

it as AAVE. The form is , a colloquial or regiolectal spelling (Androutsopoulos 2000: 521) of drawn-out no, included on Jones’s (2015: 415) list of AAVE forms on Twitter. User #62738 seems to find expressions such as nawl pleasurable, although his exaggerated reaction does not suggest a great familiarity with African-American speech. Lastly, extracts D and E criticize the Nigeria-based User #8347, who stylizes her posts with non-standardized orthography and lexis. #515 and #20935 associate this with AAs and consider it inauthentic for a Nigerian, even more so for one in Nigeria. Let us view one post from #8347 from the same thread to exemplify what the others are reacting negatively to. (14) Thread: Things About Our African Sisters We Don’t Like:, 2011; User #8347, F Yo ‘Hey u dont wanna fuck wit [#8347] you don’t want to get on my bad side i wz nt even referin 2 ur 4kn self I was not even referring to your fucking alone self alone if u wanna rili do v a gd noon if you want really to have a good noon i advice u stay clear I advise you to stay clear cz i myt jst mk u weep because I might just make you weep’

This extract illustrates what the two users perceive as AAVE. The chided poster’s style is characterized by extreme orthographic manipulation, self-assertive attitudes, offensive language, and informalisms such as yo or wanna, but crucially, no actual AAVE grammar. This discussion is continued in Chapter 8, while here, I will discuss one concrete instance of AAVE usage by a non-user for specific identity effects. It is part of a longer flirtatious interaction in which #58804 publishes photographs of herself, and two males compete for her attention. (15) Thread: Your Best Physical Or Body Feature…, 2009 #97328: pardon my fowardness. are u seeing anyone at the moment? not trying to bed rude but men u are a serious knockout #7831: may the thunder of the east coast west coast and central africa fire u! [angry emojis] she is taken, by my humble self [cool emojis] #58804: Well, How can i resist such a “fearless” man as you?! [wink emoji] I luuuv aggressive assertive men [wink emoji] --but then again- i should leave my options open sha #7831: u have to stick with the Gs, i got this rolling for ya, there ain’t no options that can take on my swagger [cool and kiss emojis]

#58804 reacts positively to #7831 boldly claiming her, which seems to motivate him to take up an even more self-confident stance, moving from “humble” to a “G” and from NigE to an American style, including elements such as G (‘gangsta’), get rolling (‘get started’), non-rhotic , ain’t in a double negation, and swagger (‘confidence, coolness, and togetherness’) (Urban Dictionary 2009a). Such



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

­ inimal resources enable #7831 to portray a desired identity in hopes of winning m the favor of an interesting female. This shows how even a type V user may momentarily mobilize simple (African-)American English resources to benefit from specific traits (here, fearlessness and assertiveness) AAVE is seen as indexing. The above examples shed light on how these non-users’ generally negative, stereotyped, and simplistic views of AAVE discourage them from using resources linked to it. After introducing the user types, it is now time to zoom in on specific linguistic features and phenomena related to U.S.-Nigerians’ AAVE usage. 6.2  AAVE features and practices 6.2.1  Authenticity issues This section returns to the fascinating but complex and controversial topic of authentication (Bucholtz 2003) of cultural identities via linguistic resources, begun in Section 3.5. The topic is approached via advanced AAVE users’ metalanguage and identity statements as well as the reactions their identity and linguistic performances spark in the larger NL community. Interestingly, it is within the expert user types that one finds the most radical cases of incongruence between self-assessment and linguistic performance. I will firstly discuss some controversial identity performances and secondly show how responses to AAVE-filled repertoires uncover the potential of AAVE in the construction of Nigerian identities. These discourses illustrate how diasporic Nigerian CMC repertoires can be stretched (or not) to encompass African-American resources, stances, and identity labels. 6.2.1.1  Controversial identities: “Reppin where am from faithfully” The first data sample is chosen to highlight the negotiability and flexibility of identities, which further goes to show that material like this can be studied most usefully with a constructivist view on identity, within which identities are seen as flexible, multiple, and continuously constructed in interaction (e.g., Bucholtz & Hall 2005). To demonstrate the partial relativity of identity categories such as “Nigerian”, a series of self-identification statements by User #75863 will be presented. The type I AAVE user #75863 is exceptional among the core 50 in that he does not unambiguously identify as Nigerian. He was born in the United States, raised by an African-American father and a Nigerian stepmother, and spent six years in Nigeria as a child and pre-teen. At the time of his sojourn on Nairaland, he was in his mid-20s, living in New York City, and involved in the rap music industry. One of his main activities on the forum is participating in rap battles. As typical rap verses are built around specific “speech acts” (Austin 1962) such as

 World Englishes on the Web

introducing oneself, praising oneself, and denigrating others, rap battles are great loci for exploring identity statements. Table  16 shows 20 identity statements in chronological order. Table 16.  Fluctuating self-identification by User #75863 A

We African Americans want to be bac to mutherland. I believe I’m from Nigeria thats y I flow here sumtimes.

(2005)

B

I’m no Nigerian but I know quite a few Nigerian kids .

(2005)

C

I’m a 9gerians born and brought up in the States . My ma is Nigerian

(2006)

D

Coming from Nigeria with no Sharia

(2006; rap battle)

E

In ma hood am Nigerian

(2006; rap battle)

F

I was born Nigerian but I live New York

(2006; rap battle)

G

I’m still goin’ be Nigerian til’ I die

(2006)

H

I’m American ok but wit my Mom bein’ Nigerian, I wud die for my Country be it USA or Nigerian.

(2006)

I

I was born half Nigerian

(2006; rap battle)

J

I mean I’m American – Thatz why U never see me in ya Land

(2006; rap battle)

K

And im not Mexican BUT a diehard fucked up Nigerian

(2006; rap battle)

L

Back to my sh**t – I rep for my Nigerian kids

(2007; rap battle)

M

Well 2 of the major diff btw we african americans n’ africans :

(2007)

N

I ain’t Nigerian U coward, can’t u see my style

(2007; rap battle)

O

Plus I ain’t NIGERIAN, my STEP MAMA is

(2007; rap battle)

P

I ain’t Nigerian but I got mad love for what I am

(2007; rap battle)

Q

I ain’t real Nigerian

(2007; rap battle)

R

Yo all my Nigerian Kinfolks […] I’M RUNNIN’ WIT A FU*CKIN’ NIGERIAN BLOOD

(2007; rap battle)

S

Born as an African American in the States

(2007)

T

See I’m American wit no sign of a Nigerian Blood

(2008; rap battle)

The excerpts show how #75863 variably self-identifies as Nigerian, American, African-American, half-Nigerian, or not (a “real”) Nigerian. Even though a development can be traced coarsely from a non-Nigerian (A–B) to Nigerian (C–G) and then again non-Nigerian identity (M–T), in between, there is also a period of more fluctuation between identity labels (H–L). Nonetheless, there is no need to assume this is a deceitful individual taking advantage of the disembodied and pseudonymous nature of the internet, willfully misleading his interlocutors. Rather, this is identity being constructed in discourse, with #75863 highlighting different aspects of his identity flexibly depending on need and context. Phrases like “half Nigerian”



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

or “[not] real Nigerian” imply that matching identity categories is not a matter of absolute all-or-nothing, but also partial participation might be possible. In this view, claiming a Nigerian identity means positioning oneself in relation to an idealized, prototypical Nigerian. The extracts also point to different factors that may play a role in authenticating or de-authenticating ethnic or national identities, including heritage (extracts A, C, F, I, and T), birthplace (C and S), linguistic performance (N), country of residence (F), and visits to the heritage country (J). E hints at the fact that perceptions may vary across contexts: in the USA, #75863 is labeled Nigerian, as he is more Nigerian than the local reference group. Examining such marginal members of an identity category helps to understand how far the category borders can be negotiated, along with what is (and what is not) considered acceptable or authentic behavior. Benor (2010: 170) recommends that a linguistic description of a(n ethnic) group begin with an exploration of discourses surrounding different related groups, and ideologies displayed in them, produced by “core members, marginal members, and non-members”. User #75863’s identity statements in Table 16 may also be analyzed in terms of language use, inspecting whether his linguistic forms align with his identity claims in each instance, or if there are any mismatches. The excerpts contain no resources unambiguously associated with Nigeria but instead numerous elements belonging to American varieties of English: lexical items such as flow, kids, hood, rep, Mom, mama, and yo, (African-) Americanized spellings, a reference to Africa as motherland (Mwakikagile 2007: 20–21), and AAVE grammar, such as the negator ain’t and the intensifier mad (Smitherman 2000: 197). As AmE is used equally in posts claiming both Nigerian and American identities, it seems to make more sense to posit a generally (African-)American (Vernacular) English repertoire for this user than to hunt for local meanings of code choices. The next instances exemplify discrepancies between users’ metalinguistic statements and their language use on the forum. The first set concerns linguistic accommodation. The topic of immigrants striving to accommodate to, or even completely assimilate into, the host society’s linguistic norms was already touched on in Section 5.1. AAVE usage by U.S.-Nigerians is often framed as undesirable accommodation or assimilation. Interestingly, even type I users, whose repertoires rely extensively on AAVE and who, therefore, arguably have precisely accommodated to their environment, largely condemn this behavior, as seen in the next excerpts. Here, phrases describing repertoires based on accommodation (“trying to sound Akata”, “act all Americanised”) are coupled with de-authenticating terms, such as fake, wannabe, or form, (NigP ‘to fake a way of speaking’) (see Heyd 2015 for NigP metacommunicative lexicon). Extracts A and B refer to musical

 World Englishes on the Web

Table 17.  Metalanguage on accommodation by expert AAVE users A

i like songs that has mostly yoruba in it i hate the american or jand wannabees ‘[…] I hate American or British wannabes’

(2006; #105851, M)

B

Most of these Naija artists from here juss deh form trying to sound AKATA! That’s da reason why I no deh respect [rapper]! ‘Most of these Nigerian artists from here are just faking, trying to sound AFRICAN-AMERICAN! That’s the reason why I don’t respect [rapper]!’

(2008; #133781, M)

C

to all thosr guys that come out here and try to act all Americanised … . Loosers

(2007; #71514, M)

D

i like naija english mix up aa english’s fun.

(2007; #24837, M)

E

I DON’T SOUND LIKE AN AKATA PLEASE DON’T SAID THAT AGAIN

(2007; #24837, M)

­ erformances, but it is hard to imagine someone who disapproves of Nigerian artp ists employing AAVE in their performances to have positive views about accommodation in less artistic or performative contexts. However, these are people who resort to AAVE heavily in their own communication. The hunt for explanations for this seemingly contradictory behavior requires extending the investigation to whole repertoires. For example, in User #105851’s case, the extenuating circumstance could be the fact that he moved to the USA at the age of five. If he has been exposed to AAVE from then on, it does not comprise a surprising component of his repertoire at all. Since he also has competence in Yoruba and NigP, perhaps it does not even occur to him that someone could consider him a wannabe, too (cf. extract A). A similar case can be made for User #133781 in B. He was raised in Europe, but it is unclear whether that includes more than the six years in Western Europe he mentions or whether he already came to the USA at the age of six. His main activity on the forum is to promote a U.S.-Nigerian rap group. The artists in question are of Nigerian heritage but born in the USA, and their lyrics combine NigP with American varieties of English  – a practice for which #133781 repeatedly expresses his appreciation. His own repertoire contains elements from mainly two sources: AAVE and NigP, both of which he employs extensively and very competently. Therefore, I suggest that #133781 may see the authenticating value of NigP as so high that it alone makes him a legitimate representative of Nigeria, irrespective of other language resources used. He does employ a very wide selection of AAVE features as well, but their role might be to mark his rap affiliation, as AAVE is known as the language of hip-hop culture (e.g., Smitherman 1997; Alim 2006).



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

Occasionally, #133781 combines resources from the two codes in a single post, or even a sentence, to construct his hybrid Nigerian-American identity. However, a repertoire combining AAVE and NigP so closely and containing so little standardized English is a definite rarity on the forum (Section 7.1). The next user with an interesting repertoire is #71514, who expresses – in light of his own AAVE usage – surprisingly negative views of accommodation to AAs. This young male had moved from Nigeria to California a year before he joined the forum. In mere 80 posts, he employs a wide variety of lexical and grammatical AAVE features. Example 16 shows his perception of his language use, as well as ideologies he holds about accommodation and different varieties. An examination of his activities on NL reveals a discrepancy between this assessment of his (spoken) repertoire and his (written) performance. (16) Thread: Is It Necessary To ‘try’ And Adapt An American,west Indian Or British Accent ?, 2007; User #71514, M Well guess wat ! i speak Patois ! and i live in killafornia, I just cant help but blendin ma Naija accent wit Patois, gives me and identity, different from dem Bay Area N!ggas, everyone that walks up to me always make that perfect guess, and the reason why i picked on Patois is its African origin, it was a languaged coined by slaves who needed an identity, and it still shows the connection to our roots, and besides i love the way English is murdered in Patois so i speak it, and of course, Ma naija accent very obvious, and ma Naija flag on ma backpack. I never tried to be what am not, to all thosr guys that come out here and try to act all Americanised … . Loosers, Yankee people can tell theirs when they see theirs, sooo i gets ma respect from homies cos am reppin where am from faithfully,

#71514 is one of the few on the forum to claim Jamaican Creole (“Patois”) as part of their linguistic repertoire. There is a significant Jamaican population in the United States (Zong & Batalova 2019), and JamC has been further popularized and spread globally by powerful cultural phenomena like reggae music and the Rastafari religion (Sebba 1993: 9; Pollard 2000: 97). User #71514 considers JamC an African language and, therefore, appropriate for Nigerians. He authenticates JamC by constructing a connection between the languages spoken by African slaves and the present Jamaican ways of speaking – authenticity arising from a “relation between […] present and past” (Gill 2011: 49). A less ideological reason for the user to want to adopt JamC is its attractiveness (“the way English is murdered in Patois”). #71514 describes JamC as a pervasive, defining part of his repertoire; indeed, there is some Jamaican influence detectable in his contributions, collected in Table 18.

 World Englishes on the Web

Table 18.  Jamaican Creole in User #71514’s repertoire A

ya blooodclat mad ! ‘you are [expletive] mad !’

(2007)

B

nuff shot inna your a$s, dog face batty bwoy, gwan go sukk your momma ‘[may you get] many shots in your bottom, dog-faced gay boy, go and suck your mother’

(2007)

C

so a 16 year old girl’s pum-pum has become a playstaion[confused emoji]?? hotta faya on all u peadophiles ‘so a 16-year-old girl’s vagina has become a PlayStation®?? hot fire on all you paedophiles’

(2007)

D

“too much ah one tin nuh guud fi nuthin” moderation is the key word. ‘“too much of one thing is not good for anything” […]’

(2008)

E

they call Ganja drug, bun dung babylon* ! ! ! ! ‘they call cannabis a drug, burn down the (oppressive) system ! ! ! !’

(2008)

F

any man dat fukk batty or bend over or rub up wit man inna sheet… its an abomination

(2008)

*  Babylon is a central Rastafari concept described by Hinrichs (2015a: 67), drawing on Davidson (2006) and Pollard (1980: 36), as representing “the epitome of all evil, the Western political system that perpetrated slavery and continues to oppress black people”, or any part of the system, such as the police.

This user’s repertoire contains some JamC resources, including the probably most widely known Jamaican word gwan (‘go away’, ‘going on’), popular Rastafarian cultural concepts (ganja, Babylon), and vulgar items (bloodclat, batty, pum-pum). Extract D quotes a proverb, whereas the condemning expressions “bun dung” and “(hotta) faya (bun)” have circulated in Jamaican music discourse for decades (Farquharson 2005: 106–107). Extract F, expressing homophobic sentiments common on NL as well as in Jamaica (Hope 2001; Farquharson 2005), repeats from earlier posts the noun batty (‘a bottom’) and the preposition inna (‘in’). However, one could point out that ya and momma are more typical of AAs than Jamaicans – “go suck yuh mada” is the Jamaican expression – and the saying in D would be more idiomatic without the negative particle nuh (Joseph Farquharson, personal communication, April 19, 2016). In terms of grammar, #71514 only employs inna and features found in both JamC and AAVE, such as them for those, multiple negation, and copula absence before an adjective phrase. Occurring in posts containing no other JamC, classifying such bivalent features as JamC is not justified. #71514 avoids some other obvious choices such as using the JamC preposition pan (‘on’) in “hotta faya on all u peadophiles”. In short, #71514 employs some fixed expressions and common lexical items but little unambiguously JamC grammar. It is, of course, possible that his spoken repertoire, to which he explicitly refers in Example 16, differs from his writing. He could be more comfortable speaking JamC than writing it  – after all, JamC



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

is ­traditionally a spoken vernacular lacking a standardized orthography (Moll 2015). This would constitute a prime example of a “truncated repertoire” in terms of modalities (Blommaert & Backus 2012). Another possibility is that #71514 consciously refrains from using extensive JamC in front of his Nigerian audience but relies on a small selection of well-known phrases to indicate his Jamaican affiliation, a phenomenon known as “dosing” in Blommaert and Varis’s view of authenticity as “enoughness” (2013: 150). A third option is that the user wants to self-identify as a JamC speaker despite having, in fact, a fairly restricted competence in the variety. Either way, JamC plays a less significant role in #71514’s CMC repertoire than he claims it does in his speech, and the bulk of his resources come from AAVE and colloquial AmE – two varieties he denies having adopted. A final aspect of Example 16 worth taking a look at is how #71514 frames his “Naija accent” as an expected, noticeable, authentic part of his repertoire and identity. Authenticity is claimed through statements of origin (“am reppin where am from faithfully”) and honesty (“I never tried to be what am not”). However, based on his contributions on NL, the “Naija accent” must indeed at most occur at the phonetic/phonemic level: his writing contains only individual occurrences of a mere handful of features identifiable as NigE, NigP, or any ethnic language. Instead, even in his very statement of origin and affiliation in Example 16, #71514 employs several AAVE lexical items (ma respect, homies, reppin). This discussion of User #71514’s repertoire, especially in light of his metalinguistic statements in Example 16, demonstrates how complex and precarious linguistic authenticities in diasporic and virtual environments can be. #71514 makes various explicit “authenticating moves” (Shenk 2007) in his metalanguage, but they are not unambiguously backed up by his language use on the forum. After only a year in the United States, he has adopted many linguistic resources from his new environment (although he might have learned some already earlier through media, for example) – mainly American but also a few Jamaican. He sees JamC as an appropriate code for Nigerians, especially when accompanied by a Nigerian accent. However, there are relatively few traces of the Nigerian and Jamaican ways of language use he extols, and his repertoire instead seems to be replete with AAVE and colloquial AmE. The next user – the last one in the batch of examples on accommodation and self-perception in Table 17 – is interesting for two reasons: firstly, as a further illustration of discrepancies between self-assessments and linguistic behavior in the expert group, and secondly, for examining how reactions from the NL community to his style demonstrate the role of AAVE in authenticating Nigerian identities. #24837 is a young male born in New York City to an African-American mother and a Hausa father. Raised by his father, he visits Nigeria yearly. From an etic perspective, #24837 could be called a second-generation half-Nigerian American, but

 World Englishes on the Web

he himself identifies most strongly as Hausa, Nigerian, and African, in this order. Example 17 demonstrates how #24837 relates to the different parts of his heritage. (17) Thread: Akata African or Akata American, 2007; User #24837, M MY MOM’S AFRICAN AMERICAN BUT I PREFER TO BE CALLED AFRICAN EVEN KNOW I GOT AN AKATA WAY I STILL LOVE TO BE CALLED AFRICAN CUZ WE PEOPLE ARE SOMETHING DIFFERENT WE MIGHT LOOK LIKE IN THE OUTSIDE BUT IN THE INSIDE WE GOT A DIFFERENT HEART,WHEN I BE WITH MY AKATA COUSIN I FEEL LIKE A DUMB AZZ,BUT WHEN I BE WITH MY AFRICAN COUSINS I FEEL ALL RESPONSIBLE AND SHIT I DON’T KNOW WHY.

Though #24837 acknowledges that he aligns himself with AAs with some of his behavior (“I GOT AN AKATA WAY”), elsewhere, he distances himself from AAs and their speech patterns (“I DON’T SOUND LIKE AN AKATA PLEASE DON’T SAID THAT AGAIN”). His self-assessments show controversy with regard to AAVE usage, but his repertoire on the forum depends unambiguously on AAVE. Example 18 shows a typical post. (18) Thread: How To Make Your Childrens African., 2007; User #24837, M i was born here but every summer my pops make-Ø me visit my grandma,he started that since i was like 5 years old,that’s why i speak my native language and Ø proud to be a nigerian,you-Ø parents need to do the same.try and send yall-Ø childrens in nigeria every summer before they turn out to be some agata’s,I GOT ONE BROTHER HE’S NAME’S [name] HE WAS BORN HERE TOO HE Ø NEVER VISIT-Ø NIGERIA WHEN THEY TELL HIM YALL SHOULD SEE HOW HE BE CURSING TA HELL OUT OF PEOPLE

At the level of contents, the post again portrays assimilation to AAs as undesirable and competence in Nigerian languages as a source of pride and Nigerianness. Linguistically, however, AAVE pervades the post. User #24837’s metalanguage reveals he identifies with his paternal Hausa rather than with any form of English. He associates English with exploitation, pointing out that “if it wasn’t because of the slavery no one would be speaking english in africa”. He reports speaking Hausa “all day” in a creative “kay haba mix up with english” (kai and haba are common Hausa exclamations), and describes his style as “the real jungle english [from] nyc east-side”. In D in Table 17, #24837 shows appreciation for mixing AAVE and Nigerian resources. All in all, this young male shows a strong double allegiance to his father’s Northern Nigeria and his own native New York City neighborhood, rhyming an answer to a question about his provenance as “nyc east-side all day/naija northside all the way”. The American influences in his repertoire are immediately visible, but he also posts a handful of messages in Hausa to a specifically Hausa thread. African-American English may be the only form of English available to him. He probably intends



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

his ­non-standardized English to symbolize belonging to the city he inhabits and admires, rather than any ethnic affiliation. His performance on NL shows the combined effects of language skills, ideologies, attitudes, and the social context. The codes most available to him are Hausa and AAVE, the first of which he sees as positively and the second as somewhat negatively connoted. In practice, however, he adapts to the forum norms, which demand English. He also speaks French, but that is less useful on the Nigerian forum, whereas NigP is almost entirely absent from his writing probably for reasons of competence. However, when considering authenticity not as an object to be discovered but as an outcome of negotiation processes – as “authentication” along the lines of Bucholtz (2003) – the most pressing questions do not concern comparisons between people’s language use and linguistic descriptions of idealized language varieties but the interactions that take place when participants negotiate the meanings of linguistic elements. One type of negotiation will be examined next, in the form of the reactions from the larger NL community to users who rely heavily on AAVE. 6.2.1.2  Reactions to expert usage of AAVE: “We NIGERIANS don’t talk street” My core sample contains a handful of forum members who self-identify as Nigerian but whose CMC repertoire consists of mainly AAVE. Such repertoires being relatively rare, the most relevant question regarding them is how they are evaluated by others. These reactions reveal Nigerians’ perceptions of AAVE as well as its potential in (de-)authenticating Nigerian and U.S.-Nigerian identities. The great amount of metalinguistic and other attention such repertoires attract is a sign that they diverge from the expectation on a Nigerian forum. We may continue with User #24837 from the previous section. The next table collects representative reactions to his style, which depends heavily on AAVE grammar and lexis. Table 19.  Reactions to User #24837’s AAVE usage A

american wa*nnabe thug ass !!!

(2007; #63415, M)

B

You’re putting so much effort into sounding hood but its coming out real wrong. As some people suggested earlier please stay in school all these doesn’t get anyone anywhere.

(2007; #120490, M)

C

You are trying to sound American instead of embracing your self.

(2007; #51847, F)

D

you sound like some ignorant blakc american

(2007; #2572, F)

E

This post made my eyes hurt! would have probably made my ears bleed if it was audio. God save us from western influence.

(2007; #24811, F)

F

All this your yo yo yo, to be serious is annoying. As someone said this is NAIRALAND for Nigerians and friends so all this “i rep ny” and stuff is bogus.

(2007; #120490, M)

G

Seriously if not for the few times you’ve written Hausa words, I would have a hard time believing you were Nigerian.

(2007; #43555, F)

 World Englishes on the Web

This sample demonstrates, firstly, that many see this user’s performance as an approximation of (African-)American speech and, secondly, that they react negatively to it. Many NLers associate  – from a linguist’s objective viewpoint, accurately – his language use with AAs, using more or less explicit terms, such as Black American, thug, hood, American, or Western. This shows Nigerians are generally able to recognize AAVE. However, as made explicit in F and G, many see NL as an inappropriate place for this type of a repertoire. The implication of “this is NAIRALAND for Nigerians and friends” is that the way #24837 represents himself is un-Nigerian and unacceptable on the forum. Extract G shows how competence in a Nigerian language can authenticate a person whose repertoire is otherwise considered non-Nigerian. Since the default on the forum is that everyone is Nigerian, people judge #24837 to be an “american wa*nnabe” instead of an actual African American. User #24837’s response to the criticism shows how he sees his way of writing as an authentic expression of his biography and belonging to New York City: “well i write like that cause i was raised on [street name] i didnt grew up in no school so what the fuk yall want me to write like.” At one point, the cold reception on the forum prompts him to change – in his words – “trina write without cursing and without putting those yo yo into [his] sentences”, but even after this, in grammatical terms, his writing stays essentially the same. It seems that it is only superficial lexical aspects of his repertoire, such as uncensored elements or the interjection yo, that operate above the level of consciousness to the extent that he is able to manipulate them at will. The rest is an inseparable part of who he is. However, the NL community chooses to see him as an inauthentic “wannabe”. Their dismissive comments – often criticizing him for sounding uneducated – understandably frustrate #24837 and ultimately cause him to reject Nigerians and turn to AAs. (19) Thread: [Rapper] Expressed Disappointment And Have Had A Change Of Plans, 2007; User #24837, M […] ALL U NIGERIANS NEED TO GET THE FUK OFF MY DICK 4 REAL,YALL DON’T LIKE ME CUZ I DON’T THINK LIKE YALL EDUCATION AND SHIT FUK OUTTA HERE, NAIJA PEOPLE ARE HATERS THEY LIKE U BETTER WHEN U HURT. MY AA NIGGAS DON’T TALK TO ME LIKE YALL DO.AM OUTTA HERE FOR FUCKIN LIFE FUK ALL NIGERIANS,BOODY SCRATCHERS. […]

Booty scratcher is an offensive term used against Africans, identified by Imoagene (2015: 180) as the “most common slur” AAs use to insult Nigerians, at least in school settings. The conflict-prone young #24837 resorting to such expressions, of course, does nothing but exacerbate the tensions between himself and the other NL members. Example 20 shows his last attempt to gain acceptance on the forum.



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

(20) Thread: [Rapper] Expressed Disappointment And Have Had A Change Of Plans, 2007; User #24837, M […] I LOVE NIGERIANS AM NIGERIAN MY POPS’S NIGERIAN,NAIJA’S MY HOME,I LOVE NAIJA PEOPLE BUT SOME OF THEM DON’T REALLY LIKE ME,THEY TAKE ME AS AN AA THAT’S Y WHEN THEY GET ON MY NERVE I BE BRINGING THE BOOTY SCRATCHING BULL SHIT.

This is a case of identity work gone awry – #24837’s audience does not give credence to his identity claim as a Nigerian but liken him to AAs. Eventually, the conflict leads to #24837 withdrawing from the forum only eight months after his first appearance. This backs up the suggestion in Section 6.1.1 that the generally lower number of posts by the type I AAVE users might be due to their repertoires alienating them from the rest of the NL community. This U.S.-born half-Nigerian joined the forum with the intention and desire to interact with Nigerians and act out his Nigerian identity. However – due to the pervasive AAVE influence in his linguistic repertoire, stemming from growing up in a largely African-American environment and listening to rap music – he was failing in the eyes of the others. His profuse usage of AAVE resources was seen as incompatible with a Nigerian identity and the NL forum, and mutual hostility ensued. Another complex case to illustrate conflicting authenticities with regard to AAVE usage features User #147267, allegedly a young male in Northeastern United States. His birthplace is unknown, but he reports having “lived little” in Nigeria and most of his life in the USA. He calls himself “a full Nigerian”, but the disrespectful manner in which he talks particularly about Nigerian women is quickly met with antagonism during his short stay on the forum, during which he writes only 150 messages. The post below demonstrates his language use and attitudes. AAVE is bolded. (21) Thread: Is 29yrs Too Early For A Guy To Marry?, 2008; User #147267, M […] Mind you, I’m very naughty. That’s why the girls like my style and I’m proud of that. Niggaz from my hood be envious, saying how they wish I was gay! They be slacking on their pimpin’ and watching with open eyes how their honeys be slippin’ away to [#147267] aka [nickname] and I got nothing to do about that, but to doublepump up my switching game. Holla at your dude, homies! We Ø in this 2gether- gat ur front, sure u gat my back. Switching’ continues and nobody Ø going to stop it. Damn, this shit is tight, man!!!!

#147267 employs some AAVE grammar – here habitual be and copula be absence – and a number of lexical items as well. However, his usage of AAVE is not c­ onsistent:

 World Englishes on the Web

at times, he relies more on AAVE, but at other times, his grammar is closer to standardized English, as part of a more neutral, typically Nigerian, verbose style (­Section 7.3.2). Hence, he is classified as a type II user. He shows a strong association with street culture and language, describing his style as “good and well polished shit from the hood”. However, other NLers completely dismiss #147267’s contributions and brash attitudes. Some critical comments are collected in Table 20, many stemming from a thread by #147267 titled “Why Are Nigerian Girls Always Ugly And Stupid?” – a prime example of his conflict-seeking behavior. The negative reactions are interesting as they show how the others struggle to construe who this person is and accuse him of different types of inauthenticities. Table 20.  Reactions to User #147267’s AAVE usage A

Stop being Akata it is not attractive papi. Just be who you are the king of the world a Nigerian.

(2008; #102364, F)

B

You come off sounding like an imature no good wanna be nigga. […] plz go n get ur self education n stp givyn nigerians a bad name out der.

(2008; #96652, F)

C

I can just hear your fake american africanised messed up accent. […] Anyone who calls themselves the “N” word is a fool

(2008; #40667, F)

D

You’re obviously a fake-ass gangsta wannabe. […] And by the way, the continuous use of the n-word just proves ur fakeness Cuz real gangstas don’t even use it so much. shit! My AA friends don’t even use it that much. Stop watchin too much tv Cuz u suck!

(2008; #58891, F)

E

You are a fake, phony, wannabe thug, loser. […] Your English is whack, your lyrics are stolen and very lame, and I bet you can’t even speak any nigerian language properly.

(2008; #78833, M)

F

U are indeed funny first you started by being broke 50cent wannabe now you end it by stealing those lines from the movie Behind enemy lines.

(2008; #7830, F)

G

You for a moment i was thinking you were in america Your wannabe skills is very displeasing.

(2008; #7830, F)

H

I really don’t believe you are in [U.S. city] , you sound more like you are from Ajegunle

(2008; deleted account)

I

this your ghetto-wanna be talk is getting old, last I checked, the slums of Ajegunle still major in pidgin, not in some fake “I learned this from watching MTV through my neigbour’s window” swear words and pseudo-gangster lingo.

(2008; #8911, M)

J

i now know that you are a local tout because ur english proficiency level is very poor

(2008; #74919, M)



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

Table 20. (Continued) K

You got a very very caustic tongue, all that foul language u dulling out is very terrible, and if you truly are Nigerian as you claim you sure have lost all your good culture breed, We NIGERIANS don’t talk street cos its not something to be proud off no matter the topic of Discuss, !!

(2008; #9463, F)

L

If you’re Nigerian, it’s of a greater shame that I dare label myself Nigerian when you ppl go all over the world embarrasing my country. What is the Difference between a Naija scammer and a Naija Nigga wanna be?

(2008; #129401, F)

M

Please and please can someone tell me if this guy is actually a Nigerian

(2008; #64018, M)

N

Oka, all this shawty this and N**** that, is quite redundant. Don’t know what you tryna put on, but it aint cute. So quit.

(2008; #14594, F)

These excerpts contain several words of de-authentication: inauthentic individuals are fake, phony, pseudo-, wannabes, and they claim, put on, or steal identities. The comments are ordered to demonstrate four types of (in-)authenticity issues. Extracts A–E portray #147267 as a U.S.-Nigerian trying to act like an African American. E and F point out that some of his writing is not his own but “stolen”. Extracts G–J even question the truthfulness of #147267’s statements, suspecting he is in reality not in the USA, where he claims to be. Finally, K–N display confusion in the face of this user’s performance up to the point of questioning whether he is Nigerian at all. Each of these accusations will now be discussed in more detail. The first five comments recognize #147267’s behavior as reminiscent of AAs and couple it with de-authenticating terms. Such statements suggest that many NLers do not accept AAVE as a major building block of an authentically Nigerian language repertoire – that the variety is downright incompatible with a Nigerian identity. These examples touch on the two highest levels of Coupland’s (2001: 415) sociolinguistic authenticity: how language may denote (or deny) “personal authenticity” and “authentic cultural membership”. #147267 is seen as not being himself, and not being a real Nigerian. Extract A implies that even though #147267 behaves like an African American, he is, in reality, a Nigerian, and that one cannot renounce that identity. Extract E suggests that competence in an indigenous language could function as a mitigating factor to authenticate an individual otherwise seen as un-Nigerian; however, this method seems to be unavailable for this user. Authors of C and D suggest that even #147267’s performance of AA(VE) is failing, suggesting he fails to employ AAVE in a credible way, overusing nigga. User #58891 places herself in an expert position because she has African-American contacts and has not gained her knowledge of AAVE through the less legitimate route of media. Moreover, the claim is that #147267 is not only trying to be

 World Englishes on the Web

someone he is not but also choosing poorly who to mimic. Such comments rely on anti-African-American and standard language ideologies, implying the inferiority of AAs and their ways of speaking. Extracts E and F suggest a different type of inauthenticity, accusing #147267 of having copied some of his “lines” from rap artists or other popular culture sources. Such behavior disaccords with Coupland’s level 4 of authenticity, which requires that language be “fully owned” by the speaker (2001: 415). Example 22 represents an unambiguous case of this. #147267’s post, on the left, is juxtaposed with the lyrics from the American rapper Jay Z’s song “Bitches & Sisters” (released in 2002 by Roc-A-Fella Records and Def Jam Recordings). The analogous parts are aligned and underlined. (22) Thread: Why Are Nigerian Girls Always Ugly And Stupid?, 2008; User #147267, M

Jay Z: “Bitches & Sisters”, lyrics from Genius Media Group (2002)

To all Ugly and Stupid Nigerian Bitches,

(Bitch)

I know You know my name and what stand for, bitch

you know my name and the company I own (Bitch)

I know You like my style and you smell my Miyake, bitch

you like my style and you smell my cologne (Bitch)

Don’t try to act like you aint feelin’ my vibes, bitch

don’t try to act like my track-record ain’t known (Bitch)

You probably rereadin’ my vibes couple time in ur bedroom, bitch

you probably gotta couple CD’s in your home (Bitch)

Don’t make me say it twice, you actin’ all uptight, bitch

don’t make me say it twice, you acting all up tight All sidity like, like, like you ain’t a (Bitch)

I ain’t no ballplayer , bitch […]

I ain’t no ball player […]

It is obvious that the post is based on the Jay Z song text; however, the text is not merely copied and pasted on the forum but selectively modified so that it applies better to this user’s situation – most notably, references to a life as a recording artist have been removed. User #147267 can be criticized for not crediting his source, but the appropriated and recontextualized text does at least loosely fit the topic of the thread, and #147267 embeds it further by adding the first line on which he dedicates the misogynistic text to “all Ugly and Stupid Nigerian Bitches”. It would be interesting to know whether the NL community would react similarly to



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

such creative appropriation of rap lyrics if they did not disagree so ­fundamentally with the message put across by it. However, with the state of affairs as it is, this playful practice is deemed further evidence of #147267’s inauthenticity. Extract E is a rich example of what an online “flame war” – “a back-and-forth of offenses […] often times involving ad hominem attacks” (Friedrich & Diniz de Figueiredo 2016: 129) – between two strangers may involve and what kinds of arguments may be used in the Nigerian context to undermine somebody. The author of E attempts to de-authenticate #147267 on many levels: as a gangster (“a fake, phony, wannabe thug”), as an educated speaker (“your English is whack”), as a rapper (“your lyrics are stolen and very lame”), and as a Nigerian, when suggesting that his repertoire lacks Nigerian elements. The next extracts, G–J, represent a further type of inauthenticity accusation, bringing forth the idea that #147267 might be lying about his location and might, in fact, not be in the United States at all. Utterances that disaccord with the extralinguistic world constitute a breach of level 3 authenticity in Coupland’s (2001) classification. Based on what and how User #147267 writes, some commenters would rather place him somewhere in Nigeria, possibly in Ajegunle, which is a notorious neighborhood in the Lagos metropolis, known as “Jungle City” and a “slum” (Mazzoli 2017: 90). They suspect #147267 has picked up AAVE phrases by watching television and is using them to mislead. They choose to ignore the fact, pointed out in extract I, that a typical Ajegunle resident would rely heavily on NigP, which seems to be missing from #147267’s repertoire. To support their hypothesis, the critics quote #147267’s level and type of English usage, profuse swearing, and an alleged overuse of nigga. In terms of grammatical or typographical errors, #147267 does not particularly stand out from the other NLers, many of whom do not seem to proofread their texts before submitting them. The forum members prove to be somewhat selective in whose idiosyncrasies they tolerate and whose not: displeased with #147267’s attitudes, they criticize him on any grounds possible. Of course, the possibility cannot be excluded that the critics are right and User #147267 is not a U.S.-Nigerian at all. Occasionally, he displays troll-like behavior, for instance, when he claims to prefer White “chicks” to Black ones. Such statements are so likely to be met with outrage and resistance on a Nigerian forum that they might well be posted with that intention; Hardaker (2013: 73) classifies this as “antipathy trolling”, where a user “proactively and usually covertly creates a sensitive and/or antagonistic context […] by being deliberately controversial or provocative”. However, #147267’s reactions to the various accusations of inauthenticity, collected in Table 21 below, come across as genuine, particularly his explanation in C of how he discovered the forum in the first place.

 World Englishes on the Web

Table 21.  User #147267 reacting to de-authenticating moves A

Why should I answer you? I don’t need you to believe me! Take it or you live it! I have an iota of admiration for you, so stop tryin’ to play pranks on me!

(2008)

B

This is my veryself working on in here. It might sound preposterous but this is me.

(2008)

C

I’ve reread my posts and seems like people here on Nland are just too puritanical. What sounds fake in there? I’m tryin’ to be honest and would need explanations. I was directed to this forum by my young uncle so I can interact with people. I’ve lived little in Nigeria and shall be visitin’ in come New Year!

(2008)

Admittedly, some of his expressions strike the reader as odd – somewhat elevated lexemes (iota, preposterous, puritanical, shall) are combined with informal spellings (, , ) and ungrammatical phrases (“lived little”, “in come New Year”). Even with the possibility of #147267 being dishonest – a risk that in fact exists to a degree for each and every user in the study – I judge the insights that can be gained from examining his interactions so valuable that they outweigh the clarity won by excluding him as a less certain case. After all, when CMC environments are examined “as contexts in their own right”, participants’ offline identities need not play a major part in the analysis (Hine 2000: 22). Nonetheless, the focus will not be on User #147267 except in this discussion, in which the benefits of examining the material he produces and prompts are undeniable. The last four excerpts in Table 20 display uncertainty in respect to #147267’s identity and linguistic performance. Extracts K–M ask whether he is in reality a Nigerian at all. Extract K implies that even if #147267 might technically be a Nigerian, his behavior does not reflect Nigerian culture and values. AAVE is explicitly de-authenticated in Nigerian repertoires: “We NIGERIANS don’t talk street”. Extract L places Nigerians who assimilate to AAs together with defrauders in the lowest social category, reserved for people who sully Nigeria’s name. These examples, opposite to what was seen in Table 16, construe Nigerianness as something that is not subject to negotiation or partiality but can be judged from outside as well, based on criteria left unnamed here: “Please and please can someone tell me if this guy is actually a nigerian”. This section set out to explore the effects AAVE can have in (de-)authenticating U.S.-Nigerians’ identities in their CMC with other Nigerians. This was done by examining metalinguistic commentary by active AAVE users as well as other forum members’ reactions to their AAVE usage. The data show how AAVE may indicate, for example, hip-hop affiliation, as is the case for User #133781, who combines it intricately with NigP to represent a specifically Nigerian rap aficionado identity, participating simultaneously in Nigerian, American, and global cultures. Alternatively, for Nigerians who grew up in the United States in AAVEspeaking communities, such as Users #24837, #75863, and #105851, AAVE is a



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

natural, seemingly authentic, part of their repertoire. However, a large part of the NL community does not seem willing to accept extensive AAVE usage as compatible with a Nigerian identity. Reactions to expert AAVE users’ forum activities are principally negative, reflecting the generally negative attitudes Nigerians display toward AAs and cultural accommodation (see Section  5.1). The discussion has also shown how making a sincere effort to project a certain AA-related identity may have counter-productive authenticity effects if the performance is judged as excessive: some NLers interpret User #147267’s behavior to reveal that he is not a U.S.-Nigerian, as he claims, but is in Nigeria, trying to act like an émigré. Reactions to his writing led the discussion to different types of (in-)authenticities, showing some of the many ways in which authenticity can be at stake in diasporic computer-mediated communication. In the rest of the chapter, examples of less pervasive AAVE usage will show that in more moderate amounts, AAVE can also be tolerated, if not celebrated, on the Nigerian forum. 6.2.2  Styleshifting into AAVE The study of stylistic variation is the area of sociolinguistics focusing on intraspeaker variation, that is, how a single person uses language differently on different occasions. It contrasts with two other sources of variation: the linguistic type, stemming from language-internal (phonological, morphological, and syntactic) constraints, and the social type, concerned with how people from different age, gender, socioeconomic, and other groups use language differently (Bell 1984: 145). This section examines stylistic variation in U.S.-Nigerians’ AAVE usage, zooming in on a few situation types in which AAVE resources appear in the writing of individuals who use the variety variably. 6.2.2.1  Rap battling: “The music of hope. .and by the way its black” One frequent context for AAVE usage is rap battling – a popular and highly creative verbal practice of composing and sharing one’s own rap lyrics on NL to compete with other forum members. Nairaland has a whole “Rap Battles” subforum, described as containing “Battle rhymes, rap warfare, hip-hop contests. You know what I mean!” (Nairaland.com 2020). This activity appropriates the AfricanAmerican linguistic practice of “battlin” in a written form, which is “a form of Black verbal dueling associated with Hip Hop Culture and the verbal art of rhyming” (Spady & Alim 1999; Alim 2004b: 240). Rapping, or MCing, is the verbal facet of hip-hop culture, characterized by “the aesthetic placement of verbal rhymes over musical beats” (Alim 2004a: 388). What one finds in writing is, of course, a grossly truncated version of a “cipha” (‘a battle’) (Alim 2006: 97–101), as spoken freestyle rapping requires a quick head

 World Englishes on the Web

and a quick tongue, relying on vocally creating and modifying a chosen rhythm and beat, on spontaneity, improvisation, and reacting to the audience. Also, the equally important non-verbal communication of “clothes, facial expressions, gesture, and bodily comportment, along with graffiti and other forms of visual art” (Alim 2015: 2) is missing in this format. In written battles, participants have almost unlimited time to polish their contributions, and the performance does not stand or fall on the vocal delivery. This enables Nigerian amateur rappers to experiment with this challenging creative and intellectual pursuit. Aspects of rapping that carry over reasonably well to the written medium are rhyming and other literary devices, division into lines and verses, typical “speech acts” (Austin 1962) such as bragging, mocking, signifying, or the dozens25 (Keyes 1984: 143), and AAVE as the linguistic code. For example, in a 2007 battle thread on Nairaland, the “rap assessment” of a verse consisted of evaluating its usage of “metaphors, punchlines, construction and creativity”. Certainly, criteria for a successful rap verse are different in this context than in ruthless ciphas between professional rappers or long-standing practitioners, and much smaller “doses” of appropriate features (Blommaert & Varis 2013: 148) might authenticate a performance as rap. Hip-hop has been “one of the most important cultural movements of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century” (Alim 2006: 11), and is inseparably associated with AAVE (Smitherman 1997; Alim 2006). Even in the Nigerian online context, the favored linguistic code for rap battling is AAVE. There are threads dedicated to battling in Nigerian languages (e.g., “Hausa Rap Room… Come And Flow For Rank”, “Strictly Naija Rap (Pigeon English Rap)”, “Yoruba Rap War”), but otherwise, the expected language seems to be AAVE. Alim argues that “the use of [Hip Hop Nation Language] has been tied to the linguistic systems and cultural modes of discourse that both derive from and reinvent the African American Oral Tradition” (2015: 1). In Alim’s terms, the Rap Battles subforum is a “Black Language Space”, that is, “a discursive space where [AAVE] is the prestige variety” (2006: 102). It can be argued that the existence and popularity of rap battles on a Nigerian web forum is in itself a concrete sign of the attraction of AfricanAmerican culture and language worldwide. The rap subforum contained nearly 2,000 threads in 2020. Four core members actively participate in these battles, a few more write one or two verses, and many more report to listen to rap music, so this sphere of popular culture is definitely relevant as a potential source of AAVE influence for these U.S.-Nigerians, as well as a locus for producing AAVE.

.  The last two are typically “black speech acts” (Keyes 1984: 143). Signifying means “talking about someone in an indirect manner”, whereas the dozens is a “game of exchanging ritualized insults” (Keyes 1984: 146–147).



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

One of the regulars on the Rap Battles subforum is User #62179, a type II AAVE user who studied in Northeastern United States before returning to Nigeria in 2010. His almost 4,000 contributions stem from 2005–2012. He expresses his rap affiliation with powerful statements such as “[hip-hop is] the music of hope… and by the way its black” or “i listen to rap music becos frankly,i can relate to the struggle behind the message”. In a rap verse, he self-identifies as “nigga […] with that thug appeal”, and his use of AAVE-associated resources is heavily concentrated in this context, though he also enjoys discussing, for example, politics. Example 23 contains the first half of a typical rap verse by him. (23) Thread: Greatest Rapper On Nairaland Volume Two (group Tournament), 2007; User #62179, M In stretch hummers I be traveling, niggas Ø mad cause they shit be unraveling, am the reason you fools be hollering,bitch nigga u Ø nothing but a relic,am a hang u in my gallery, cause your style is played out like sony workmans u wannabee, go back to puffing on canabies, nigga get wit tha programme, you aint for real fool you Ø faker than them holograms,  nigga am heavy duty,weigh a ton of kilograms, nigga hope u inserted yo diaphram,when u got it on with [#45495],tell yo bitch to go take a polygraph, cause that bitch be lying to you since day one she played wit more balls than [tennis star], cause I still bust nuts on her armpits,the bitch be taking you for a fool like gambit, […]

This is a typical diss (from disrespect) – a hip-hop practice where the goal is to use one’s wit to insult one’s opponents. It contains numerous AAVE features, grammatical as well as lexical (busting nuts for ‘a male orgasm’, play out for ‘outdated’) (Smitherman 2000: 85, 231). The excerpt is a clear demonstration of #62179’s high competence in AAVE, though simultaneously, the BrE spelling of and calling the SONY portable tape player instead of Walkman® point to the fact that he is an immigrant who did not acquire literacy in the United States (see Section 7.3.3 on Nigerian spellings). It is revealing to compare these lyrics with this user’s style in other contexts. The next example is a contribution by the same author from the same year on a different subforum (Ethnic, Racial, Or Sectarian Politics). (24) Thread: Have You Ever Experienced Racism In Yankee?, 2007; User #62179, M @[#61411] and i tell u that u cannot blame the kids that grow up in these environments of ghetto and poverty,for what they have no control over,its

 World Englishes on the Web

like white south africans that suddenly find out that there is too much crime after apartheid…duh. .what do u expect when a whole people were systematically denied opportunity to advance in society,so if you are a young minority growing up in the inner city,wit little opportunity i daresay your mental health is threatened and assaulted daily…how u choose to blame these kids for their sorroundings is beyond me…

The style, especially in terms of orthography, capitalization, and punctuation, is still informal, but there is hardly a trace of AAVE influence – one could, at most, count the orthographic representation of stopping the dental fricative in as such. For #62179, AAVE has its place in the rap cultural context but not in his other NL interactions. As a second example, one may look at a freestyle verse from User #58891, a prolific teenaged forum member who constructs an identity as a novice rapper with statements like “I know i suck but what it do”. Her usage of AAVE for this activity fits together well with her associating the variety with “play” (A in Table 69). The substantial AAVE and AmE influence in the verse, visible both on the lexical and grammatical levels, is again bolded. (25) Thread: *Rap *Freestyle * Vol 2, 2007; User #58891, F oops… y’all thought i was gone??well, i ain’t goin’ no where Am backkkkkkkkkk!!! [tongue emoji] for reAlz Took me some vacation to clear some issues And from what i saw y’all was on the DL too [down-low, ‘quiet’] But now am back to spit that crack Like fat joe, cash comes first and if u don’t like it, just fall back Better ask my ex, he Ø like *mami’s naught-y he knows Cuz he’s my roc bo-y we just deliver lyrics like cash flow I know y’all Ø mad Cuz she Ø sassy But she don’t really care Cuz she Ø proud as hell And if u don’t like that too, u can go to hell. [smile emoji] [#58891]’s in tha house, put ‘em up. put ‘em up what am finna say is i got this locked up a’ight go ‘head and suck ur teeth Am done Cuz i can’t stand that stank breath Y’all know what it is Been done told you, this ain’t no diss. I just focus on my focus so u better focus on yo focus. I know i suck but what it do I’mma keep do in’ what it do What Ø u gon do bout that?? u ain’t gon do squat!! I’ll keep doin’ what i do Cuz



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

Best believe, y’all love it so i heard so I’mma be back to collect [puzzled emoji] for now, crack crack crack. [tongue emoji]

For insight into #58891’s motives for participating in rap battles, one may take a look at Example 26, which is a snippet from a rap verse she contrives a month after the previous excerpt to reminisce on her journey on the forum until then. (26) Thread: Nairaland Emceez : 2007 Rap Up (introspective), 2008; User #58891, F […] First Rap freestyle topic, peeped to see what was goin’ on Jokingly, dropped some rhymes but nobody was feelin’ my ass so i moved on Couldn’t stay off the topic tho (yes, i like hood boys)Cuz second time it was created,i was there in seconds Homeboy, [#75863] started feelin’ my rhymes He like ‘girl, your game is tight’, am like ‘yeah u’s a d-boy’ Showed me love but the rest were neutral […]

#58891 seems to have been driven by curiosity and attraction to a “hood” lifestyle and “boys”, and even though she was briefly put off by her lack of immediate success, she soon returned. An important descriptor of her behavior is the adverb jokingly – the idea of using AAVE for jocular purposes repeats throughout this user’s posts. The type I user #75863, mentioned in Example 26 as an encouraging figure on the rap subforum, is involved in the American rap industry and is the third active rap battler among the core 50. In addition to these three, at least one more core member makes several visits to the Rap Battles subforum. User #6229 is another teenaged female insecure about her rap abilities, as seen in comments such as “I know i suck, and i wouldn’t like to drop whack lines” and “i must confess im slackin with my flows”; a good “flow” is one characteristic of a successful rap performance, consisting of “the temporal relationship between the beats and the rhymes” (Alim 2006: 15). Again, User #75863 comes to encourage the novice: “U ain’t lackin and ain’t doin bad at all So baby keep it real and rollin’”. Despite the generally competitive nature of the pursuit and the abundance of diss talk in rap verses, the ambience on this subforum is ultimately encouraging and inclusive, and participants with different skill levels in rapping and the accompanying language forms are welcome to try their hand at rhyming. Users #58891 and #6229 are not the only ones to add to their performance self-deprecating provisos in order to fend off criticism. One finds statements such as “I KNOW I SUCK!!!”, “Hmm. let me try”, or “Please, I am not that good but see what I was able to compose”. This experimental quality of rapping on NL is seen again in the (for now) last rap example, which is the only rap verse published by this U.S.-Nigerian. It opens this thread, the title of which reveals the intended genre and addressees of the text:

 World Englishes on the Web

it is a rap verse to the moderators who had banned the user, forcing her to create a second moniker to be able to post.26 (27) Thread: @mods Listen To This Rap Verse I Wrote Just For You Guys, 2009; User #3109, F Hey, I’m [#3109], you guys ban me but I don’t melt/You’re heartlessness is getting you no where, but I bet you don’t care/ release me if you want to, but I know you guys won’t/ I’m a gangster for some reason, so I’ll beat you up Take your admin and make him bow to me Yo yo yo, [#2536] and [#3596] are the same people banning up and down for they know nothing to do If you must ban me you can ban yourself because you know you’re guilty of the same offence. But if you have some compassion, you’ll understand my plight Cos I’m a frustrated innocent person sorry for her mistake and pleading for leniency Cos I’m a gangster when I talk mods lay low. [cool emojis]

In linguistic terms, this message contrasts radically with what is generally found in the rap battle threads, as represented by Examples 23 and 25. Most rap verses rely on AAVE as a resource, whereas #3109 is a non-user of AAVE. Indeed, the only recognizable rap elements in Example 27 are the division of the text into lines, the stereotypical hip-hop interjection yo (Beers Fägersten 2008), and overtly claiming a gangster identity. In fact, apart from the CMC clippings “admin” and “mods” (administrator, moderators) and the common non-standardized spelling of because as , the text is essentially in standardized English. There is no attempt at rhyming, and the author seems undecided about whether to take up an assertive gangster identity or to humbly plead the moderators to end her ban. In general, the audience seems entertained by this text, with many expressing laughter either verbally or visually through emojis. It seems that for the NL readership, the dose of rap characteristics needed for authenticating (cf. Blommaert & Varis 2013) a text as a rap verse is very small, although there are disaccording voices. However, it must be noted that this verse was not posted on the Rap Battles subforum, where AAVE usage seems to be an essential element of most stylizations, whether by diasporic or Nigeria-based members.

.  A temporary ban is a standard disciplinary procedure for minor breaches of the forum rules, issued by the moderators. Some core members have more than one account; however, for clarity’s sake, in this work, the different monikers of a single user are subsumed under one number code.



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

6.2.2.2  Accommodation to one’s interlocutors: “Whatcha been up to homie?” Another situation that might prompt Nairaland members to use more AAVE resources is when others do it, too. Bell (1984, 2001) recognizes the importance of the addressee as a factor explaining language variation in his work on “audience design”, the main tenet of which is that “[s]peakers design their style primarily for and in response to their audience” (2001: 143). Bell (1984: 159) divides the audience further into explicit addressees, auditors (non-addressed legitimate participants), overhearers (present non-participants), and eavesdroppers. Bell’s model is based on spoken interactions, but it can be applied to written exchanges as well and has been adapted to computer-mediated communication by Tagg and Seargeant (2014). Their terminology fits semi-public social network sites such as Facebook, distinguishing between addressees, active Friends “whom a user usually interacts with”, other Friends, and the internet as a whole (Seargeant & Tagg 2014: 172). On a public web forum such as NL, in addition to the addressees, who may be quoted or referred to by their pseudonyms, there are several other audience types whose presence might be relevant: those who have contributed to the thread before, those typically active on a particular subforum, the entire NL community, and, finally, essentially anyone with access to the internet who could stumble across the public website. All of these may influence an author’s choices, probably in decreasing order of importance. Conversation openings on the forum come in the form of initiating threads. The topic-opening user has to “imagine” an audience (e.g., Marvick & boyd 2010) and choose their style and code accordingly. From then on, one’s linguistic choices are likely to be affected by the other participants in the discussion. For example, the presence of a co-ethnic might trigger the use of the shared heritage language. Similarly, conversing with AAs or AAVE-using Nigerians may make an occasional AAVE user put the AAVE resources in their repertoire to use. For example, User #58891 seems to employ more AAVE when writing with the AAVE expert user #24837. These two young U.S.-Nigerians form a short friendship as #58891 is one of the few, if not the only, who act sympathetically toward #24837 when the community becomes increasingly hostile toward him (Table 19). #58891 contributed over 10,000 posts on NL, most of them short messages in orthographically informal English. She must have learned AAVE at her all-Black school, as she commands a particularly wide variety of features, including many AAVE verbal markers (Section 6.2.3). However, she only uses them occasionally, for example in her freestyle rapping (Example 25) or when chatting with #24837. She is clearly very capable of writing standardized English, but she “really do[es]n’t think it’s all that necessary [on the] forum”. As another example of shifting to AAVE motivated by one’s interlocutors, User #75945’s case may be discussed. She relocated from Nigeria to a multi-ethnic

 World Englishes on the Web

neighborhood in a major U.S. city as a toddler, but these factors hardly show in her online writing, characterized by few non-standardized features. Throughout her 8,800 posts, #75945 demonstrates quantitatively minimal usage of AAVE, and she is classified as a type IV user. Table 22 shows a selection of her AAVE usage27 in immediate interactions with AAs. Table 22.  AAVE usage by User #75945 as audience design A

#47507: #75945:

So [nickname]……. So what? Whatcha been up to homie?

(2010)

B

#128882:

Heey [nickname]! What you doing for New Years Eve? You going down to the MTV party? lol, nah. Imma be with a “friend” at a party [wink emoji]. How about you girl?

(2010)

(throws a bloody tampon at [nickname]) (drives off) lol lol, you Ø crazy. You want us to back to those days when we were having fist fights? Bring it heffa. I ain’t scurred! [tongue emoji] Oh hells no [shocked emoji] Ø You tryin’ take it there huh? Aiight, imma lay yo as∙ s∙ out [neighborhood] style!!

(2011)

Nigga was that supposed to help? [puzzled emoji] coz you just made it worse [grin and cry emojis] Lmaaaaaoooo, ya’ll will be fine. Imma get my rowboat ready so I can rescue some people if Texas gets hit [grin emoji]

(2011)

#75945: C

#86097: #75945: #86097: #75945:

D

[deleted account]: #75945:

Many of the AAVE resources in #75945’s repertoire are crossover features that appear in colloquial American English as well, such as homie (‘a friend’) or the 2pl pronoun y’all (Smitherman 2000: 168, 303; Section 6.2.6). #75945’s interlocutors in extracts A–C are African American, and it is obvious from the contents that she has already interacted with each of them before. In D, discussing the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, the AAVE lexeme nigga – semantically inverted by AAs into “a term of affection” (Holt 1972: 154) – might have prompted the switch into AAVE. The addressee is a close acquaintance of #75945’s, the two having even met in person. #75945’s sporadic use of AAVE often seems to be motivated by her addressees being African American or writing in AAVE. Addressee-induced styleshifting can be researched more reliably by counting specific features in a more rigorously ­controlled and delimited data set (e.g., Alim 2004b). The goal here is merely to .  Not all of the bolded items are necessarily originally or predominantly African American, but judging from popular Urban Dictionary definitions, nah (2006b), aiight (2005d), and possibly also whatcha (2004b) are often associated with gangsters or rappers.



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

suggest that this phenomenon is likely to inspire AAVE usage on the Nigerian forum, and to present some first impressionistic evidence that this is the case. 6.2.2.3  Fictional narratives: “Shes Ghetto and She’s got it all!” The third and last set of examples of styleshifting shows how inconsistent AAVE users employ AAVE resources in a more condensed manner in their creative writing. AAVE usage seems to be considered more acceptable in such performative contexts. The first example is the beginning of a flash fiction piece, the total of which comprises 1,200 words. It was posted by #14594 to the Literature subforum as a response to an assignment to write about a murder. The two characters in the story speak and think in AAVE, including grammatical features (was for were, absence of auxiliary be), AAVE lexis (ass-augmentation, trick ‘a person who can be easily manipulated’, triflin ‘irresponsible, inadequate’, get with ‘to establish a relationship with someone’) (Smitherman 2000), and the lexical usage of referring to sexual activities with food vocabulary (biting at an apple, licking candy) (Dillard 1977). The text also shows how this user sees uncensored elements (Spears 1998) as an essential part of AAVE communicative practice (Chapter 8). Items that could be considered profane or taboo are highlighted with dotted underlining, while AAVE is bolded. (28) Thread: Role Play: Reloaded, 2008; User #14594, F It was 4:30 in the damn morning. Where the hell was Ronaldo? His ass was suppose-Ø to be home 7 hours ago. Oh he Ø going to get it when he steps in. Oh he Ø gone get it. Who the hell does he think he is having me waiting up at this hour? 7:00 he finally steps in. “Where in God’s name have you been Ronaldo? It is 7 in the damn morning. Yo trifling ass told me you would be home at ten. What fucking lie do you have thought up to tell me?” He just smiled and walked into the kitchen. “What Ø you smiling for Ronaldo?” “Why Ø you acting this way Ju Letta? Like you Ø pretty or something. What you thought we was together sincerely? Trick please. You aint nothing but a sideline. I only got with you because I wanted a piece of that ass. Now I got it and well you aint really shit to me now? The only good thing about you is the way you suck my stuff. Besides that, you aint nothing. You sure as hell aint pretty and will always be nothing but a booty call. Think of it like this bust it baby, you’re like an apple. I had my bites at cha and now it’s time to throw out the core. Well im threw with screwing with you and oh yeah I never really loved you. I just said that to get a lick of that candy. So have a nice life trick cause you sure as hell aint my woman.” […]

The usage of AAVE contributes to constructing the characters of the story. It is important to note that this piece, in fact, represents anti-African-American ideologies, containing a host of negative, gendered stereotypes. The author presents

 World Englishes on the Web

her AAVE-speaking characters in a morally dubious light and invites the audience to laugh at them or disapprove of them. The same user makes similar moves on a smaller scale in the post below, in which she performs a woman from social housing (“project”) who is pregnant without the prospect of a marriage – a negative stereotype about AAs, embodied in the term baby mama. (29) Thread: Engaged, Pregnant And Competing With A Fellow Nigerian Woman!, 2008; User #14594, F LMAO!!! Tell this to all the baby mamas in the world. Talking bout, (project chic accent) “Mayne gurl, you know that boy right thurr? You know LaShawndon? Yeah, babyboy sex-Ø me so good, damn we was making music. Now Im carrying his baby. It was worth it.”

The short excerpt contains several AAVE-related elements, such as an unmarked past form (“babyboy sex-Ø me”), was for were, orthographic representations of (African-)American pronunciation (, ), and the name LaShawndon, parodying stereotypical African-American names. In this thread, unwed, unprotected sex is presented as irresponsible and stupid, and assigned to AAs. This implicit hostility is slightly surprising considering this user’s other comments from around the same time. (30) Thread: This Is Why Africans Look Down On Black Americans, 2008; User #14594, F @All you akata haters, just shut up I mean seriously. geez you guys spend so much time watching too much t.v to even no what real AA are like. im not saying AA are saints but all this rubbish being said is ridiculous and down right stupid.go educate your selves.

Paradoxically, User #14594, on the one hand, explicitly defends AAs against stereotyping misrepresentations in the media but, on the other hand, distributes implicitly hostile material herself. A text parallel to the one in Example 28 is produced by User #91770. This is the beginning of a 1,200-word story featuring three African-American characters in a rivalrous love triangle. The dialogue, of which only a snippet can be seen here, contains significant amounts of AAVE, whereas the foreword features only a few AAVE expressions, particularly when introducing the character named Brandy, labeled as “Ghetto” (footnote 22 in Section 5.1). AAVE is used selectively to construe the setting and the identity of the characters, as well as to build a contrast between the assertive Brandy and the good girl Toya. AAVE is bolded and obscene elements are marked with dotted underlining. (31) Thread: ‘Torn’ – A Story, 2006; User #91770, F […] Brandy: She’s called MA – Miss Attitude! Shes Ghetto and She’s got it all! Beauty and Brains. A local supermodel who gets that dough! What



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

more could a Nigga ask for? she aint scared of no one, and doesn’t care what anyone says. Brandy is on top of her game but is in love with someone else’s man. Shawn: The typical everyday Nigga. He’s got the looks he’s Sexy, Handsome, and every lady wants him. He’s a personal trainer at the gym! Thats right! So you know he’s in shape. He’s got that killer body. He’s torn in between his girlfriend Toya, and his Mistress Brandy. Toya: A sweet and beautiful young lady who’s known around campus because of her wealthy family. A full time business student at the University of Illinois Chicago. She’s madly in love with her boyfriend of two years, Shawn. Scene 1: Brandy calls Shawn. Brandy is outside her house while Shawn is in his basement and Toya is upstairs watching Tyra Banks. Shawn: (Picks up the phone) Hey B, Brandy: Hey baby how are you? I want to know when next you Ø coming down here to see me. Shawn: Brandy, i’ve told you I can’t be coming like i used to anymore i’ve told you Toya is starting to suspect me. Brandy: I don’t give a fuck if she suspect-Ø shitt nigga I don’t care. I love you i don’t care about her. Shawn: There you go again, matter of fact I gotta roll. Brandy: You gotta go? Fuck no you don’t gotta go no where. You’s a damn liar. Shawn: Damn girl! why is you tripping? i gotta go okay ill call you later. Brandy gets mad and hangs up. […]

Even though this story also promotes unfavorable gendered stereotypes about AAs – males as adulterous and unreliable, and females as angry and clingy – at least the characters are depicted as successful individuals. In the next example, User #62179, who employs AAVE primarily in his rap verses, writes in the name of another user with the goal of deriding him. The target is an African-American male who regularly voices anti-Nigerian and anti-African sentiments. After a prolonged feud between the two, #62179 devises a fictional explanation for #62552’s grudge against Nigerians  – essentially depicting it as stemming from #62552 having constantly been turned down by African women and defeated by African men. AAVE-related resources are bolded and other informal (American) English marked with dotted underlining to show how #62179 imitates an African American; the strikethrough is in the original. (32) Thread: [#62552] Profile: My Story,why i hate Nigerians, 2009; User #62179, M PROFILE of NAIRALANDs resident UNFORTUNATE AKATA My name is [username], i am a black american or akata as u Nigerians like to call us behind our backs,no nigga i speak it to your face anyway i first started hating Africans,in high school when the white girls in my school wouldnt fuck with us blacks but fcked all them africans and jamaicans with exotic accents to make matters worse,their african girls would’nt even look at us

 World Englishes on the Web

 like there was this bad ass Nigerian chick from houston i wanted to fck with but my mans told me she dont date akatas,cause her dad told her we were’nt raised right since then i Ø been hating all nigerian chicks and africans in general i tried to get on with it in [city],u know Ø tried to date em somali chicks and ethiopians cause they Ø not african u know, see how dumb u are [nickname] but them bitches they Ø worse than the stupid nigerian chick,they love their people too,plus i also finally found out they Ø africans too,damn!! ok so i was like fck it, Ø am only dating my black rashiedas,and tyeshias so Ø am cooling Ø went to a club one nite, Ø got the digits of this pretty black chick, Ø was gonna make her my queen and everything but then guess what,yea u guessed it she be stringing me along,i was taking her out spending all my dough,come to find out she got a NIGERIAN boyfriend and that nigga got a benz too, sorry mugu go buy ya own now damn who do these rich nigerians think they are,coming to america and taking our chicks,while we cant even fck with theirs so i became really depressed, Ø got me a nine milli and was gonna shoot the next nigerian or african i came across, but sadly i didnt have the guts. ndo so i decided to blow my brains instead,but yea u guessed it i didnt have the guts to do that too so what did i do? yep i decided to find the most popular Nigerian website online,and torment their monkey asses  yep thats my story and i just pooped in ma pants, so i gotta go clean up,bye dutty africans

The narrative is interspersed with #62179’s own comments, written in strike­ through text to mark them as a different voice. In these parts, #62179 sprinkles in some Nigerian resources (mugu NigP ‘a fool’, ndo Igbo ‘please’). Thereby, #62179 employs linguistic and typographical means to construct two contrasting voices, representing #62552 as pathetic, ignorant, cowardly, and African American, and himself as assertive, successful, and Nigerian. Evidently, despite exalting comments about AAs (D in Table 10), #62179 is not immune to the pervasive negative stereotypes either. The next, and for now last, example of a stylized text employing AAVE is again from #14594, the author of Examples 28 and 29. It is a contribution to a thread in which misandry is veiled in humor in descriptions of undesirable “types” of men. The original poster published fifteen such texts, which seem to have inspired #14594 to devise a text of her own. (33) Thread: Cocktail Of Men: The Type Of Brothas Who Turn Us Off!, 2008; User #14594, F Mr. Preacher:now ladies you wanna be careful around these fellas. the put up a nice front. they pretend to be all “Christ like” but are really the



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

opposite. they are the true freaks. they walk around preaching bible scripts and spreading the good word. But catch the fellas on a Saturday night. They be the first in the Strip club throwing dollars as if he done won the lottery. knowing good and well he can barely afford a two-piece and biscuit28. They be saying “Amen!!” everytime one of them broads give-Ø him a lil lap dance.then stop over to his sideline house to get a lil sample of her cookies. But watch that same fella on Sunday running around like he just recieved the “Holy Ghost”. And stay after for bible study knowing good and well what he done did last night.

The post contains some distinctively AAVE characteristics, such as invariant habitual be, perfect done, broad as “a generic term for a woman” (Smitherman 2000: 82), as well as a food item (cookies) as a euphemism for sex (Dillard 1977). #14594 might be using AAVE to imply she is talking about specifically AfricanAmerican men  – brotha refers to them in AAVE (Smitherman 2000: 82)  – but also to add expressive power to her writing. What styleshifting to AAVE in these stories has in common with the same phenomenon in rap battles is that the writer is performing  – their AAVE usage is not authentic in the sense of being “fully owned” by them (Coupland 2001: 415). Such texts may also be examined to see which features Nigerians employ in their imitations of AAVE. High-profile grammatical features seem to include at least the absence of copula be, multiple negation, invariant be, negator ain’t, assaugmentation, them for those, and non-standardized agreement patterns, such as “we was” and “you is”. Moreover, all texts rely on some AAVE lexemes, uncensored elements, and sexual topics and vocabulary. This topic is returned to in Chapter 8. This section has presented examples of Nigerians resorting to AAVE occasionally and selectively when accommodating to other AAVE users, adapting to the genre requirements of rap lyrics, presenting AAVE voices in fictional narratives, or stylizing their texts. Examining styleshifting more meticulously would require more controlled circumstances and quantification of specific variables (e.g., Alim 2004b). However, for the purpose of this study, the goal was merely to point out that this phenomenon is relevant for some U.S.-Nigerians, particularly in AAVE user types II and III, and to suggest typical situations for it to occur. Next, a number of concrete linguistic resources will be discussed that are mainly used by the two expert AAVE user groups. 6.2.3  Verbal markers The verb phrase might be the area of grammar where AAVE most notably differs from standardized English (Wolfram 2004: 177). Many of the differences concern .  This refers to a fast-food meal including two pieces of fried chicken and one biscuit.

 World Englishes on the Web

AAVE’s verbal markers, which are elements akin to auxiliary verbs. Green (2002) discusses a number of markers in detail. She distinguishes “aspectual” or “verbal markers” (be, been, and done) from “preverbal markers” (finna, steady, and come) without, however, justifying this distinction. All these items are grammaticalized, resemanticized verbal forms (apart from deadjectival steady) that precede main verbs (although be and been may also appear with other parts of speech) and encode tense, aspectual, or modal meanings. Because of these shared properties, these resources are merged under one heading in this book. Table 23 provides an overview of the relevant forms with examples from Green (2002). Table 23.  AAVE verbal markers, following Green (2002) Verbal marker

Examples

habitual or iterative invariant be

be eating ‘usually eats’ I be in my office by 7:30

perfect done

dən* ate ‘have already eaten’ I told him you dən changed had dən ate ‘had already eaten’

remote past been

BIN eating ‘have been eating for a long time’ BIN ate ‘ate a long time ago’ had BIN ate ‘had eaten a long time ago’

remote past resultant been done

BIN dən ate ‘finished eating a long time ago’

futurate finna

She was finna move the mattress herself when I got there

futurate I’ma

I’ma eat ‘I will eat’

intensifying steady

Them students be steady trying to make a buck

indignant come

Don’t come acting like you don’t know what happened

*  The spellings and are used by Green (2002) to bring to attention the fact that the two items are pronounced unstressed and stressed, respectively. However, as stress bears little significance in written data, it is not reflected in my choice of terminology.

A complicating feature of these markers is that most of them are not unique in form but rely on morphemes that appear in standardized English as well. This formal similarity may mask the functional differences  – a phenomenon known as “linguistic camouflaging” (Wolfram 2004: 114–115) – with the possible consequence that someone with less than a full competence in the variety may think that since an element formally resembles a familiar word, it has the same semanticpragmatic functions as well. One question to ask about Nigerians acquiring AAVE resources, especially the camouflaged ones, is whether they learn them in their syntactic and semantic-pragmatic entirety, or whether their acquisition is of a



Chapter 6.  African-American linguistic resources in diasporic Nigerian repertoires 

more superficial nature that unknowingly neglects, for example, meaning nuances or details of syntactic behavior. One could view any atypical usage as an error, but some cases may also be seen as language change and reinterpretation, and framed more positively as innovation or appropriation. The intention here is to retain a strictly descriptive grip as far as possible. In this section, five markers will be examined: be, done, been, finna, and I’ma, each of which exemplifies important usage patterns of complex AAVE grammar in Nigerian CMC. Steady and come are heavily camouflaged by related standardized forms (Baugh 1984: 3) and their meanings are very specific, making the items infrequent. Obviously, rare features are not the strongest candidates for occasional borrowing or long-term adoption by out-group speakers. Because of their low frequency, steady and come are excluded from the discussion. 6.2.3.1  Habitual or iterative invariant be Habitual be is perhaps the best-known AAVE feature in terms of both linguistic research dedicated to it and non-AAs recognizing it as AAVE (Wolfram 2004: 118). Although invariant be seems to be developing an equative function as well (Alim 2004b: 180; Wolfram 2004: 119), this discussion is only concerned with be in a preverbal position (henceforth, be v-ing), where it signals repeatedly occurring “habitual or iterative” situations (Green 2002: 47). The marker, which is always in its uninflected form, is most typically followed by the present participle of the main verb, but also past participles (for passive voice) or other parts of speech (for denoting usual identities, properties, or locations of the subject) are permitted (2002: 48–49). The discussion focuses on the core 50 as representatives of U.S.-Nigerians (with the discussed limitations). I searched for “be” and manually sorted out the vast majority of results as irrelevant. Be v-ing is used by all members but one in the two expert groups, and a few more users in the remaining three groups. Table 24 shows the frequency of be v-ing among those 24 users who use it, given both as a raw figure (“Total frequency”) and normalized per 1,000 posts by each user. Table 24.  Invariant be v-ing by the core 50 User type

User ID

Habitual/ iterative

Futurate

Other nonhabitual

Total frequency

Per 1,000 posts

I

#24837

 41

 –

–

 41

 41

I

#75863

 33

 3

–

 36

 29

I

#133781

  6

 –

–

  6

  8

I

#105851

  2

 –

–

  2

  8 (Continued)

 World Englishes on the Web

Table 24. (Continued) User type

User ID

Habitual/ iterative

Futurate

Other nonhabitual

Total frequency

Per 1,000 posts

II

#62179

 88

 4

–

 92

 23

II

#58891

 69

 –

1

 70

  6

II

#147267

 22

 4

1

 27

180

II

#3092

 17

 –

1

 18

  2

II

#61188

 16

 –

–

 16

  9

II

#14594

 15

 –

–

 15

  3

II

#91770

  7

 –

–

  7

  2

II

#50582

  4

 –

–

  4