Abstract

The Nigerian youth language phenomenon has often been labelled, albeit reductively, as Pidgin or Pidgin-based—to the exclusion of other varieties which co-constitute the ecology of youth argots in the country. Drawing on the notion of indexicality, this article presents a range of Pidgin and non-Pidgin exemplars and illuminates their linguistic as well as discursive strategies. Though ostensibly diverse and sphere-specific, they consist of syntax drawn from the informal varieties of existing languages and the insertion of mainly lexical features, including slang, neologism, borrowing, relexicalisation, and metaphorisation. Rather than labelling them, this article defines them as a cluster of linguistic (and paralinguistic) practices with indexical links to youthfulness, conviviality, in-groupness, camaraderie, etc., and draws attention to the changing demographics of their user communities.

摘要

尼日利亚的青年语言现象虽然被归类为“ Pidgin”或“ Pidgin”，但经常被贴上标签，而排除了其他构成该国青年youth生态的其他品种。利用索引性的概念，本文介绍了一系列的Pidgin和非Pidgin示例，并阐明了它们的语言和话语策略。尽管表面上是多种多样的且特定于领域的，但它们由从现有语言的非正式变体中提取的语法以及主要的词法特征（包括lang语，新词，借用，词法化和隐喻）组成。本文并未对其进行标记，而是将它们定义为一组语言（和副语言）实践，并与青少年，欢乐，团体，友情等建立了索引联系，