Book Reviews: World Englishes on the Web: The Nigerian Diaspora in the USA

Following the introduction of English through British colonial administration, the language has continued to play formal and prestigious roles in Nigeria—even becoming nativized enough to embody the particularities of the Nigerian experience (Bamgbose 1996). The diversity of its nativization (which has consequently birthed the nomenclature Nigerian English), as well as how Nigerian immigrant populations in the United States manifest this particular linguistic flavor alongside American linguistic realities, constitute the sociolinguistic engagements in World Englishes on the web.

Across its nine chapters, Mirka Honkanen’s World Englishes on the web focuses on the relationship between language and social identity, with an emphasis on Nigerian-Americans in the United States. The book explores the linguistic construction of immigrant identities with data from Nairaland, a prominent Nigerian web forum. Nairaland (subsequently NL) is a rich source of data for studies on Nigerian digital engagements because of its large number of subscribers who interact on diverse topics. NL’s suitability is further enhanced by its popularity among Nigerians in Nigeria, diasporic Nigerians, as well as non-Nigerians.

The corpus for the study, Nairaland 2, was downloaded with a web crawler. These downloaded texts, made up of 843.1 million tokens, span from March 14, 2005 (when NL was created) to February 19, 2014. While the focus is on data from fifty core US-based Nigerian users, the discussions are supplemented by posts and comments by other non-US-based Nigerian users. By integrating both posts and comments by Nigerian-Americans and Nigerians in Nigeria, there is a cross-locational examination of linguistic practices between “home” and diaspora. What the author centralizes in her argument is that, within the battle for identity and representation, language plays roles of validation and authentication in addition to signaling the yearnings and struggles of diasporic Nigerians.

Chapter 1 lays the foundation as it provides the motivation for the study, locating it within existing sociolinguistic approaches to multilingualism and globalization. In chapter 2, the concern shifts to the linguistic situation in Nigeria and then to linguistic practices by Nigerian-Americans. This chapter engages the crisis of identity and challenges of authenticity, particularly among educated diasporic Nigerians. Chapter 3 provides more critical theoretical exposition of concepts like authenticity and authentication (i.e., linguistic practices where users appropriate and approximate certain linguistic norms in order to indicate national, ethnic, or cultural identity; see Coupland 2001), as well as multilingualism, codeswitching, etc., which are involved in the formation of identities among the US-Nigerian diaspora. Chapter 4 gives detailed information on the data source as well as the methods of analysis. The author applies corpus analytical tools (Net Corpora Administrative Tool) and computer-mediated discourse analysis to the analysis of digital linguistic data, and incorporates ethnographic information (gender, geographical location, ethnolinguistic identity, etc.) of the users. Chapters 5 to 8 are the empirical sections of the study. Chapter 5 focuses on African American Vernacular English (AAVE; I use this term to be consistent with the author, though many linguists have moved towards the term “African American Language” instead), and the attitudes of US-Nigerians to this variety of English. Chapter 6 is the most analytically rich as it explores, in-depth, AAVE linguistic resources and how these manifest in the repertoires of US-based Nigerians. The users are categorized into consistent experts, inconsistent experts, occasional users, minimal users, and non-users based on the extent of integration of AAVE in their linguistic compositions. Several stylistic markers of AAVE, such as ain’t, y’all, finna, I’ma, have become commonplace in the writings of these NL users, and these features distinguish the US-Nigerian users from other non-US-based users. Chapter 7 emphasizes the influences of Nigerian on the linguistic repertoires of the US-based Nigerian diaspora who use NL, including Nigerian Pidgin, Nigerian indigenous languages, and Nigerian English. Chapter 8 draws attention to the creative and multilingual resources in the data, revealing how AAVE, Nigerian English, Nigerian Pidgin, and indigenous Nigerian languages function differently as codes for group identification. Chapter 9 ties together the multiple strands of analyses and suggests directions for future studies.

Two critical contexts stand out in the text: the US-Nigerian diaspora and Nigeria. Within the US-Nigerian diasporic context, the author asserts that the idea of linguistic homogeneity, especially based on national borders/origins, is outmoded. To arrive at this conclusion, the book examines sociocultural influences and language prestige in the choice of linguistic code, examining how the Nigerian-American emigrant navigates the diverse possibilities within their repertoire (see chapters 2 and 5). For example, despite its presence in the writings of the Nigerian-American diaspora, AAVE is often perceived by some Nigerian-Americans as vernacular English used by an economically marginalized demographic and relevant mainly within the context of rap battling. It is therefore unsurprising to encounter submissions like: “Stop being Akata it is not attractive papi. ¹ Just be who you are the king of the world a Nigerian” (114). Positive perceptions of AAVE by many Nigerian-Americans are however contextualized within the recognition that it assists with their cultural immersion in the US and helps maintain an American identity, distinguishing Nigerian-Americans from other Nigerians. On the other hand, AAVE is negatively perceived by many non-US-based commenters who identify expert AAVE users as excessively fronting their Americanization.

Connecting the Nigerian-American experiences to NL users’ Nigerian background, and thus making the comparative linguistic exploration more engaging, the book examines how the Nigerian motherland is invoked, especially considering the massive influences of Nigerian Pidgin and Afrobeats on diasporic audiences (Akingbe & Onanuga 2018). World Englishes on the web explores convincingly how the heterogenous sociolinguistic backgrounds of US-Nigerian NL commenters are revealed in their linguistic repertoire. Some linguistic features in particular through which these users reflect their Nigerian-ness are codemixing, non-standardized spellings, reduplication, fictive kinship terms, non-standardized syntax, Nigerian English lexical neologisms, and other morpho-syntactic and lexical features such as expressions that are not everyday choices but which are used online to signal proficiency. For example, realizations like Chief, Bro, Sis, Oga [Boss], Nna [Brother], Nne [Sister], Egbon [Senior] (262), since they are used among people who do not have any filial relationship, constitute fictive kinship terms used to mark respect or politeness, key requirements in Nigerian conversations. Use of pronouns like: “these your long posts” and “this their tribal warfare” and non-standardized noun forms such as stuffs, equipments, jargons, furnitures, (255-256), as well as neologisms like funkinize (to alter in order to make funky or attractive), baby papaism, yorubanglish, 419ish, shakara-like (266) are also signaled as Nigerianisms. These realizations emphasize that migration and globalization have de-territorialized language use. Authenticity thus becomes a fluid construct, one which is invoked linguistically depending on the context within which an individual is performing. In essence, the diversity of the NL’s linguistic ecology reflects the affordances provided by the digital space.

In all, Mirka Honkanen’s World Englishes on the web is an engaging sociolinguistic treatise on the influences of Nigerian linguistic realities on Americanized identities. A major takeaway from the book is the need for more sociolinguistic examinations of the presence and usage of indigenous Nigerian—indeed all other minoritized—languages on web fora. In addition, extending the realities of Nigerian English to existing World Englishes scholarship has highlighted that speakers of English have adapted and molded the language to their local social and pragmatic needs, making the English language a global force.

Although there is hardly any text without a weakness, I dare say that World Englishes on the web’s weakness is also its strength. While the data analyzed are mainly from a “core 50” (57) US-based Nigerians, thus presenting a possibility of under-representation, the population also made it possible to critically analyze identified linguistic practices as those which can be generalizable, at least among young linguistically and culturally-hybrid language users. This however does not detract from the enriching contributions that the book makes to the academic study of the linguistic ecology of Nairaland and, by extension, to the appreciation of the Nigerian “digital ethnolinguistic repertoire” (Heyd & Mair 2014). In fact, one can extend these findings to other sociocultural contexts where the English language functions within a plural linguistic ecology. With its lucid language and clear conceptualization of the gap it proposes to fill, World Englishes on the web is a useful resource for scholars, researchers, and students interested in the ways digital fora reveal how immigrant communities hybridize by adapting to the linguistic demands of their new home while also retaining their indigenous identities.