-
oa Conventionalization and variation in computer-mediated communication
New perspectives on Nigerian Pidgin spelling
- Source: English World-Wide, Volume 46, Issue 1, Apr 2025, p. 1 - 27
-
- 16 Apr 2024
- 20 Aug 2024
- 14 Mar 2025
- Previous Article
- Table of Contents
- Next Article
Abstract
Abstract
This paper investigates spelling practices in Nigerian Pidgin (NigP) computer-mediated communication (CMC) as well as Nigerians’ perceptions of these. The first part is a corpus-based analysis. It shows that conventionalization of spelling variants is taking place in the absence of formal standardization. Furthermore, we observe the application of general CMC respelling strategies, e.g. vowel reduction. The second part is a survey study where participants were asked to judge the correctness of spelling variants. When the corpus results indicated the existence of a conventionalized spelling, the participants tended to either endorse this or, when shown an alternative, suggest it as the correct form; items that are more variable in the corpus yielded more mixed results. We apply and elaborate on the notion of “standardization from below” (Elspaß 2021) and we argue that the existence of conventionalized NigP spellings makes possible deviations from these in CMC-typical fashion just as in Standard English.