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UDC 821.111(432)
https://doi.org/10.20339/PhS.6-20.307
Markova Elena A.,
Candidate of Philology, Assistant Professor
of the Foreign Languages Department
Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia
e-mail: abellen@yandex.ru
This article examines literary works of bilingual authors in Nigeria, who create their own national cultural worldviews through the language in which they write, thereby explaining why English in Nigeria is influenced by Nigerian culture.
Nigeria is a country that has witnessed a cross-flow of linguistic change due to its inherent multilingualism combined with colonial experiences under British rule, a country where ethnic minorities were referred to as “oil minorities”. Although only two languages are recognized as official languages in Nigeria — Yoruba and English –the problem of multilingualism in Nigeria today remains unexplored, and where there is language contact, there must be a language conflict. Indeed, contiguous languages are often competitive languages and there is no language contact without language conflict. Moreover, the problem of linguistic contact and linguistic conflict exists at three different but interrelated levels: social, psychological and linguistic. The social aspect is related to such issues as the choice of language and its use, the psychological — to the attitude towards language, ethnicity, while the linguistic aspects are focused on the code switching, the donor language intervention, which the English language is. The language conflict has influenced the literary work of Nigerian writers writing in English, which has become an exoglossic language, superimposed on the indigenous languages of the Nigerian peoples. Thus, bilingualism in Nigeria can be considered semi-exoglossic, including English coupled with language mixing.
Keywords: African national literature, language contacts, multilingualism, bilingualism, exoglossic bilingualism, ethnic literature.
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