A VARIATIONIST ANALYSIS OF ZERO QUOTATIVE IN NIGERIAN ENGLISH

Abstract

This study explores the ways speakers of Nigerian English re-create their
own speech and the speech of others in narrative discourse using zero
quotative. It investigates how the speaker’s choice of zero quotative is
constrained by both linguistic (the content of the quote, grammatical
person of the quotative, and tense/time reference of the quotative) and
social (age, regional origin, sex, and social class) factors. The quotative
forms in this study were transcribed from sociolinguistic interviews
conducted with 180 participants in Nigeria. The study adopts
Variationist Sociolinguistics (Labov 1963, 1966; Tagliamonte 2012),
using a mixed-methods approach that relies on both quantitative and
qualitative analyses. For multivariate analysis of the quotative forms, a
statistical program called Rbrul (Johnson, 2009) was used. The findings
establish that zero quotative has an important presence in Nigerian
English and the speakers of this variety of English use zero quotative in
marking dramatic effects and creating immediacy. This study offers
insight into understanding the mechanisms of linguistic change and
how zero quotative functions in Nigerian English.