Language Creolization in Contemporary English-Language Nigerian Media Discourse

This study analyzes the current state of the Nigerian variety of English within the English-language media landscape of Nigeria. The primary objective of the article is to assess the degree of creolization of the English language at the phonetic, morphological, lexical, and syntactic levels in the Nigerian online newspaper “Punch.” Unique characteristics of English-language Nigerian media discourse are identified, including a limited range of topics and publication volume, a predominance of analytical and informational article genres, and the creolization of English. It is demonstrated that phonetic creolization is associated with highly productive transformational processes such as assimilation and epenthesis. Morphological creolization is observed through deviations from standard norms in the formation of tense aspects of verbs, the conversion of direct speech into indirect speech, and the omission of prepositions. The article reports that lexical creolization in English-language Nigerian media discourse is linked to frequent borrowings from both European and local languages, as well as the adaptation of idiomatic expressions to local linguistic and cultural contexts. It is asserted that syntactic creolization manifests as inverted word order in sentences.