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Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes
Edited by Alexandra U. Esimaje, Ulrike Gut and Bassey E. Antia
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 88] 2019
► pp. 205–230

Chapter 2.2
The use of stance markers in West African Englishes

| University of Münster
| Redeemer’s University

This chapter investigates the extent of similarity in the use of stance markers in two national varieties of West African English, Nigerian English and Ghanaian English, and compares them to British English. The frequency and stylistic variability of four semantic groups of stance markers were examined in ICE-Nigeria and ICE-Ghana and compared with ICE-Great Britain. The results are mixed: the two West African varieties show an overall lower frequency of stance markers compared to British English but the speakers of the two West African English varieties do not demonstrate lower stylistic variability in the use of stance markers across different text types. Notwithstanding, there are systematic differences in stance marker usage between the two West African English varieties.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Stance markers within a variational pragmatic framework
  • 3.Data and method
  • 4.Results
    • Use of stance markers in different text types
  • 5.Summary and discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 13 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.88.10gut
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