A Socio-Phonological Investigation of German Accent Acquisition Among Multilingual Nigerian Learners: Identity, Authenticity, and Instruction

This study conducts a socio-phonological investigation of German accent acquisition among multilingual Nigerian learners of German, examining the intersection of phonological development, linguistic identity, and instructional context in shaping accent outcomes. German accent acquisition research has focused primarily on monolingual L1 speaker benchmarks and European learner populations, and the question of how multilingual Nigerian learners with diverse phonological substrates (Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Efik, and others) navigate accent development, and what social meanings they attach to their German accents, remains largely unexplored. The study recruits 90 German language students at advanced proficiency levels from six Nigerian universities and collects read-aloud speech, spontaneous conversation, and oral presentation samples. Acoustic phonetic analysis, using Praat software, measures key segmental and prosodic variables. Sociolinguistic interviews and an accent attitude questionnaire explore identity orientations and perceptions of native and non-native German accents. Longitudinal data are collected at two points eighteen months apart to track developmental changes. Findings reveal that Nigerian German accent development is shaped by a complex interplay of mother tongue phonology, English phonological norms, instructional quality, and identity investment, with significant inter-speaker variation. The study develops a socio-phonological model of German accent acquisition for multilingual African learners. Keywords: German accent acquisition, socio-phonology, multilingual Nigerian learners, identity, acoustic phonetics.