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Christian Mair & Theresa Heyd

University of Freiburg

'I hardly speak Pidgin – I just type it on the computer': Displaced and mediated vernaculars as a challenge to research on World Englishes

 

The title quote – a slightly adapted version of a contribution to a Nigerian diasporic web forum – provides a perfect illustration of the phenomenon which will be at the centre of attention in the present contribution. Transnational currents of migration, diaspora formation, urban "super-diversity" (Vertovec 2007), "crossing" (Rampton 1995), global pop-cultural movements and the media and entertainment industries have conspired to make a small number of non-standard and originally highly local and stigmatised varieties of English (including pidgins and creoles) extremely visible on a global scale. Examples include London-based demotic British English, popularly often (mis)-identified as "Estuary English", African-American Vernacular English, Jamaican Creole or, in focus here, Nigerian Pidgin.

In the first part of my paper I will illustrate the transformations Nigerian Pidgin undergoes when used in web-based communication. Pidgin on the web turns out to be rather different from Pidgin on the ground, but remains a powerful resource for constructing authentic group membership and for vernacularising the digital medium. In my concluding remarks I will argue that we should adapt de Swaan's (2002, 2010) model of the "world language system" to varieties of English, in order to better understand the ever shifting dynamic of the standardisation and de-standardisation of English in a multilingual and globalising world.

 

 

References

de Swaan, Abram. 2002. The World Language System: A Political Sociology and Political Economy of Language. Cambridge: Polity.

de Swaan, Abram. 2010. "Language Systems." In Nikolas Coupland. The Handbook of Language and Globalization. Malden MA: Blackwell. 56-76.

Rampton, Ben. 1995. Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents. London: Longman.

Vertovec, Steven. 2007. "Super-diversity and its implications." Ethnic and Racial Studies 30: 1024-1054.

 
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