“A Corpus-Pragmatic Study of Address Terms in Nigerian English”

Abstract

Address terms are key pragmatic resources for negotiating social relations, indexing power, and construing cultural identity. Although Nigerian English has been widely described at phonological and lexicogrammatical levels, pragmatic patterning, especially the use of address terms, remains under-described. This study offers a corpus-pragmatic account of address terms in Nigerian English, comparing it with British English to examine the nativisation of pragmatic norms in a postcolonial setting. Drawing on postcolonial pragmatics (Anchimbe, 2018) as the theoretical framework, the analysis draws on comparable components of the International Corpus of English for Nigeria (ICE-NG) and Great Britain (ICE-GB). Address terms are identified through a combined lexicon and concordance-driven procedure and analysed via frequency and dispersion measures, collocation, and concordance analysis across registers. The dataset includes deferential terms such as sir, ma, chief, oga; kinship extensions like brother, sister, aunty, uncle; and professional titles such as doctor and professor. Results show that Nigerian English uses address terms at substantially higher rates than British English, with sir and ma frequently functioning as default politeness markers in interactional contexts where British English typically omits an address term. Kinship terms are systematically extended to non-kin relations to mark solidarity and respect, while oga displays a range of functions from deference to stance-marking and irony. Collocational and register patterns indicate a stable pragmatic system, concentrated in discourse contexts involving requests, directives, and relational negotiation. The findings contribute to World Englishes and pragmatics by documenting variety-specific address practices and demonstrating the value of corpus methods for analysing pragmatic variation. They challenge Anglocentric politeness models and provide empirical evidence for the endonormative stabilisation of Nigerian English, with implications for English language teaching, lexicography, and cross-cultural communication in Nigerian contexts.