Constructing Nigerian-Accented French: Phonological Variation, Prestige, and Identity

Nigerian-accented French constitutes a distinctive phonological variety shaped by multiple L1 substrates, English phonological influence, and specific patterns of French acquisition within the Nigerian educational system, yet it has not been described as a coherent phonological object or theorised in relation to prestige, stigma, and speaker identity. This study constructs the first systematic phonological description of Nigerian-accented French and theorises its relationship to prestige attributions and speaker identity among Nigerian French users. A variationist sociolinguistics design was employed, combining acoustic phonetic analysis with matched guise experiments and ethnographic interview research. A stratified phonological corpus of 60 hours of recorded French production was assembled from Nigerian French speakers across four L1 backgrounds (Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Ijaw) and three proficiency levels. Acoustic analysis using Praat characterised vowel space, consonant realisation patterns, and prosodic features. Matched guise experiments with 120 Nigerian French listener-judges assessed prestige attributions and social identity inferences from phonological variation. Results document a core set of twelve Nigerian French phonological features shared across L1 backgrounds, suggesting incipient variety formation, alongside L1-specific phonological residues. Prestige judgements among Nigerian listener-judges showed significant positive valuation of Nigerian-accented French in contexts framed as ECOWAS professional communication, but negative valuation in contexts framed as European metropolitan interaction, revealing context-dependent prestige indexing. The study advances a theory of emergent variety legitimacy applicable to African English-background French phonologies. Keywords: Nigerian French, phonological variation, variationist sociolinguistics, prestige, accent identity