Conventionalization and variation in computer-mediated communication New perspectives on Nigerian Pidgin spelling

Deuber, Dagmar; Shakir, Muhammad; Oyebola, Folajimi Kehinde

Research article (journal) | Peer reviewed

Abstract

This paper investigates spelling practices in Nigerian Pidgin (NigP) computer-mediated communication (CMC) as well as Nigerians’ perceptions of these. The first part is a corpus-based analysis. It shows that conventionalization of spelling variants is taking place in the absence of formal standardization. Furthermore, we observe the application of general CMC respelling strategies, e.g. vowel reduction. The second part is a survey study where participants were asked to judge the correctness of spelling variants. When the corpus results indicated the existence of a conventionalized spelling, the participants tended to either endorse this or, when shown an alternative, suggest it as the correct form; items that are more variable in the corpus yielded more mixed results. We apply and elaborate on the notion of “standardization from below” (Elspaß 2021) and we argue that the existence of conventionalized NigP spellings makes possible deviations from these in CMC-typical fashion just as in Standard English.

Details about the publication

JournalEnglish World-Wide
Volume46
Issue1
Page range1-27
Article number1
StatusPublished
Release year2025 (14/03/2025)
Language in which the publication is writtenEnglish
DOI10.1075/eww.24018.deu
KeywordsNigerian Pidgin; spelling variation; standardization; computer-mediated communication; corpus; survey

Authors from the University of Münster

Deuber, Dagmar
Professur für Variationslinguistik (Prof. Deuber)
Shakir, Muhammad
Professur für Variationslinguistik (Prof. Deuber)