📖 ABSTRACT/OVERVIEW
The lexical influence of French on Nigerian English, mediated through colonial contact, elite education, and ongoing West African francophone interaction, manifests in the use of French-origin words and phrases in print media, yet this phenomenon has not been systematically documented for the contemporary Nigerian newspaper context. This study analyses the occurrence and usage patterns of French loanwords in three major Nigerian newspapers: The Punch, The Guardian, and Daily Trust, over a six-month publication period. A corpus linguistics methodology was applied, with a sample of 480 newspaper editions manually searched and digitally scanned for French-derived lexical items. Identified loanwords were classified by semantic domain, frequency of occurrence, and degree of nativisation in Nigerian English usage. A total of 214 distinct French-origin lexical items were identified, spanning the domains of diplomacy, cuisine, fashion, politics, and law. Fully nativised loanwords such as bouquet, bureau, and premiere appeared without typographic marking, while technical borrowings in diplomatic and legal discourse were occasionally italicised or glossed. Daily Trust, read predominantly in the North where French contact through Niger Republic is active, showed a higher frequency of trade and border-related French borrowings than the Lagos-based newspapers. The study contributes to the documentation of French-English lexical contact in Nigeria and argues that loanword frequency in elite print media reflects the sociolinguistic prestige of French in specific Nigerian public discourse domains. Keywords: French loanwords, Nigerian English, newspaper corpus, lexical borrowing, language contact
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