Cultural conceptualisations in Nigerian Pidgin English proverbs

This article explores Nigerian Pidgin English proverbs as a source of cultural conceptualisations that reflect traditional wisdom as well as the modern urban setting of West Africa. A total of 173 proverbs sourced from the BBC News Pidgin's Instagram service were analysed for recurrent lexical...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inWorld Englishes Vol. 43; no. 3; pp. 471 - 490
Main Author Callies, Marcus
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.09.2024
Subjects
Language culture relationship
Nigerian English
Pidgins
Proverbs
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Summary:This article explores Nigerian Pidgin English proverbs as a source of cultural conceptualisations that reflect traditional wisdom as well as the modern urban setting of West Africa. A total of 173 proverbs sourced from the BBC News Pidgin's Instagram service were analysed for recurrent lexical keywords and themes (e.g. those relating to food, eating and drinking, and animals) that can be interpreted as source domain lexical material that points to the knowledge of nature, common animals, objects and social situations. The findings suggest that Nigerian Pidgin English proverbs contain a rich inventory of variety‐ and culture‐specific lexis that encodes cultural knowledge and practice, for example knowledge of the local flora and fauna, food items, but also objects of material culture such as clothing, as well as references to social culture.
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ISSN:0883-2919
1467-971X
DOI:10.1111/weng.12660