USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: Nigerian Pidgin English Proverbs : The Institutionalization of a Tradition

                                                                                                                                                                
​
​

                           Nigerian Pidgin English Proverbs 

                        The Institutionalization of a Tradition

            
​

                              Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                          Compcros

                    Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

      "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

The ongoing exploration of Nigerian Pidgin English proverbs initiated by Stella Ishiekwene Kpolugbo and Aoiri Obaigbo at the University of Benin English and Literature Students and Alumni Facebook group founded by Aoiri Obaigbo,in demonstrating its expressive range in terms of an iconic form of native Nigerian languages,represents an effort at the institutionalization of Nigerian Pidgin English, an informal language which has become a lingua franca in Southern Nigeria.

The irony of a group composed of graduates and students of a university department centred in the study of all aspects of Standard English linguistics and composition, all periods of English literature,along with other literatures in English is able to give birth to such a vigorous outpouring of the linguistic creativity represented by the proverb as expressed in Nigerian Pidgin English suggests that these contributors to this corpus have been active users of this language even as they did their academic work in Standard English, a polyglotism issuing from the multicultural nexus the African has often become in the wake of the cultural transmutations created by contact with Europe.

Proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten, steeds of discourse unleashed as instruments of cognitive retrieval when discourse goes astray,the ' kpim', the expressive nexus of classical African philosophies, to adapt an Igbo coinage from Pantalon Iruegbu in consonance with Igbo and Yoruba conceptions of the proverb.As is befitting of a language that adapts English diction to the grammatical structures of native African languages, Nigerian Pidgin English is shown by this exercise on the Facebook group to have appropriated this particularly distinctive feature of the indigenous African languages, linguistic dynamism dramatizing the social dynamism of identity reconfigurations .

Image above from 10 Funny Nigerian English Proverbs and Quotes.

Accessed 24/11/2015

Also posted on

Facebook

Cognitive Diary blog

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.