The Language of Advertising in Nigerian English: A Study of Selected Newspaper and Billboard Advertisements in Abuja

This study analyses the linguistic strategies employed in Nigerian English advertising discourse, drawing on a corpus of newspaper and billboard advertisements collected in Abuja, Federal Capital Territory. Advertising language in Nigeria operates within a distinctive sociolinguistic context in which global commercial communication conventions are adapted to resonate with Nigerian audiences through the use of local idioms, proverbs, code-mixing, and culturally specific appeals. The study compiles a corpus of 80 advertisements from three national newspapers and 40 billboard advertisements photographed in high-traffic areas of Abuja between April and July 2023, covering product categories including telecommunications, banking, consumer goods, and political campaigns. Linguistic analysis applies Leech's framework for advertising language, examining imperatives, puns, repetition, slogans, and intertextual references. Pragmatic analysis investigates the cultural assumptions embedded in the advertisements' appeals to family, religious faith, national pride, and aspiration. Findings reveal a productive tension in Nigerian advertising between globalised product messaging and local cultural grounding, with the most effective advertisements in the sample deploying Nigerian English idiom, Pidgin English elements, or explicit references to Nigerian cultural values to anchor international brands in local affective territory. Abuja-specific advertising shows a distinctive blend of national political imagery and multicultural appeal reflecting the capital's identity as a pan-Nigerian symbolic space. The study argues that Nigerian advertising English constitutes a creative applied register worthy of sustained linguistic attention. Keywords: advertising language, Nigerian English, discourse analysis, Abuja, commercial communication.