Postcolonial Linguistics and the Politics of Standard Language Ideology in Nigerian Education: A Critical Theoretical Investigation

This dissertation develops a critical theoretical investigation of standard language ideology in Nigerian education, examining how ideological beliefs about correct English function as mechanisms of social reproduction, how they interact with postcolonial language hierarchies, and how they might be challenged through postcolonial linguistics and critical language pedagogy. Standard language ideology, the belief that there is one correct, uniform, and superior form of a language against which all other varieties are deficient deviations, has been extensively critiqued in sociolinguistics and language education scholarship, but its specific operations in the Nigerian educational system, where a Eurocentric standard English norm is deployed against the linguistic practices of 200 million speakers of an enormously diverse language ecology, require original theoretical development and empirical investigation. The dissertation proceeds in three phases: a theoretical phase constructing a postcolonial standard language ideology framework drawing on language ideology theory, postcolonial linguistics, African philosophy of language, and critical pedagogy; an empirical phase involving documentary analysis of 15 years of Nigerian English language examination marking schemes and teacher training documents, survey research with 120 English teachers on their language ideology attitudes, and student focus group discussions in Lagos, Kano, and Enugu; and a proposal phase developing an original critical language pedagogy framework for Nigerian English education. Original theoretical contributions include the postcolonial standard language ideology framework and the critical language pedagogy proposal. Findings reveal that standard language ideology is deeply embedded in teacher training and examination practice in ways that systematically disadvantage speakers of non-elite Nigerian English varieties. Keywords: standard language ideology, postcolonial linguistics, Nigerian education, critical pedagogy, language hierarchy.