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Photo: UHH/Denstorf

Lagos

The project

In Nigeria, where about 500 languages coexist, Nigerian Standard English serves as the dominant language in media and education. There is limited research on the English varieties and language attitudes among middle-class speakers in diverse urban areas. In Lagos, a major economic hub with a population of approximately 20 million, Nigerian Standard English coexists with local languages and Nigerian Pidgin English. While Standard English plays a significant in business and administration, it competes with Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and Pidgin English, reflecting a unique linguistic ecology.

This research project focuses on the interplay of different English varieties in Alimosho's Ikotun-Igando and Egbe-Idimu Local Community Development Areas, which differ in their economic activities. By examining language variation and attitudes, the study aims to contribute to understanding postcolonial English in this vibrant urban setting while exploring the socio-linguistic dynamics of its multilingual landscape.

The team

Henning Schreiber is Professor for African Linguistics at the Asien-Afrika-Institut of the University of Hamburg, and PI of the subproject "English in selected Local Government Areas of the multilingual ecology of Lagos (Nigeria)". Among his interests, language contact and contact induced variation, sociolinguistics and social network theory, language documentation and corpus linguistics, linguistic reconstruction, language classification, Mande and related West African languages.

For more information, please refer to: https://www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/afrika/personen/schreiber.html

Ismail Afolabi is a PhD student at the University of Hamburg. His research areas include multilingualism, language ideologies, indigenous language media, and language preservation.

Prof. Herbert Igboanusi's research focuses on the language-in-education policy and practice in the Anglophone West African countries of Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia and Sierra Leone. For more information, please visit: https://independent.academia.edu/HerbertIgboanusi