Language Contact, Convergence, and the Emergence of Urban Nigerian Englishes in Four Megacities: Lagos, Kano, Enugu, and Port Harcourt

This dissertation investigates language contact dynamics and the emergence of distinctive urban Nigerian English varieties in four Nigerian megacities, Lagos, Kano, Enugu, and Port Harcourt, contributing original empirical and theoretical evidence to the understanding of urban language ecology in one of the world's most linguistically complex countries. Nigerian English has been described primarily as a national standard variety, but the specific conditions of intense multilingual contact, rapid urbanisation, youth culture, and commercial dynamism in Nigeria's major cities are producing locally distinctive urban varieties whose social indexicalities, formal features, and developmental trajectories have not been systematically studied. The dissertation employs a comparative sociolinguistic fieldwork methodology across all four cities, collecting naturalistic speech data from 200 young adults through sociolinguistic interviews, peer group conversations, and electronic communication sampling. Phonological, lexical, and pragmatic features are analysed using quantitative sociolinguistic methods, with social network analysis and interview data used to examine the social embedding of distinctive urban features. The theoretical contribution develops an urban language ecology model for Nigerian English that integrates accommodation theory, dialect levelling and divergence processes, and the role of popular culture and digital media in accelerating urban variety development. Original findings include the documentation of city-specific phonological variants and lexical innovations not previously recorded in the Nigerian English literature, and evidence of youth-led language innovation outpacing description in all four cities. Keywords: urban Nigerian English, language contact, sociolinguistics, megacity, language ecology.