Bilingualism and Linguistic Influence in Nigeria: Examples from the Works of Achebe and Emecheta
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The present study explores the mutual influence that English and the Nigerian languages have on each other and demonstrates how Nigerian literary writers have succeeded in effectively capturing this in their works. The study, after analyzing Achebe’s No Longer at Ease and Anthills of the Savannah, and Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood with reference to borrowing, code-mixing and code-switching, coinages, semantic changes and peculiar Nigerian structures/expressions, reveals that the languages mutually influence each other since they exist side by side in the lives and tongues of Nigerians. The study also reveals that such Nigerian expressions as “lifu”, “bubas”, “eat bribe”, “been-to”, “not on seat”, “bottom power”, “owner’s corner”, “August break”, “son of the soil”, “after-bride palmwine”, “chief wife”, “aso-ebi cloth” and “you may laugh if laughter catches you”, among several others, are manifestations of this mutual influence in the speech and writing of Nigerians. Their occurrence in the works of Achebe and Emecheta, therefore, indicates that they, as literary writers, are conversant with happenings in the Nigerian linguistic scene. Thus, the study shows that Nigerians are creative in the use of language since they are able to tap their bilingual experiences to adapt the languages at their disposal to suit the numerous conveniences, experiences, nuances and sensibilities in the Nigerian environment. The study also shows that this mutual influence, which has resulted in several peculiar Nigerian usages, has contributed immensely to the effective reflection and expression of the Nigerian experience and should, therefore, be seen as a good sign of healthy co-existence between English and the Nigerian languages in Nigeria’s multilingual setting.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".