Publications
Publication details [#67434]
Unuabonah, Foluke Olayinka. 2020. “So you know ehn … ” The use of bilingual interjections in Nigerian English. Intercultural Pragmatics 17 (2) : 151–176.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Language as a subject
Journal WWW
Annotation
This paper investigates four bilingual interjections: na wa, shikena,
ehn, and ehen, with the objective of exploring their sources, meanings, frequencies,
spelling stability, positions, collocational patterns and discourse-pragmatic
functions in Nigerian English. The data which were obtained from the Nigerian
component of the Global Web-based English corpus were analyzed quantitatively
and qualitatively, using the theory of pragmatic borrowing. The results
indicate that na wa, which is loaned from Nigerian Pidgin, is actually a modified
form of a Hausa expression, na wahala, shikena is borrowed from Hausa, while
ehn and ehen are loaned from Yoruba. Na wa is an emotive interjection, shikena
and ehen are cognitive interjections, while ehn can function both as phatic and
as emotive interjections. Both ehn and ehen also function as pragmatic markers.
The study thus extends research on the discourse-pragmatic features of Nigerian
English.