An Investigation of Pragmatic Competence in Nigerian English: A Study of L2 Speech Act Realisation Among Students in Kwara State

This study investigates pragmatic competence in Nigerian English, focusing on the realisation of selected speech acts by second-language English users among university students in Kwara State, North Central Nigeria. Pragmatic competence in second language acquisition has been extensively studied in East Asian and European contexts, but Nigerian English pragmatics, particularly among speakers in the North Central zone, remains a significant research gap. The study employs an interlanguage pragmatics methodology drawing on the framework of Cross-Cultural Speech Act Research. A discourse completion task was administered to 180 students at the University of Ilorin, supplemented by role-play tasks and retrospective verbal protocols to access pragmatic decision processes. Speech acts targeted include requests, apologies, and complaints across institutional and peer contexts. The data were coded using established speech act coding schemes adapted for the Nigerian context, and results were compared with a reference corpus of native speaker responses. Findings reveal systematic patterns in which Nigerian English speakers over-rely on direct strategies in request and complaint realisations with authority figures, diverging from the indirect strategies typically deployed by native speakers in equivalent contexts. Apology realisations show the greatest convergence with native speaker norms. The study recommends pragmatic instruction as a formal component of university English language programmes in North Central Nigeria. Keywords: pragmatic competence, Nigerian English, speech acts, Kwara State, interlanguage pragmatics.