“Shorsh,” “Sors,” or “Church” - Who cares? Accents and Linguistic Capital in Nigeria
| dc.contributor.author | Sogunro, Bolanle Olufumbi | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-04-10T08:26:07Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-04-10T08:26:07Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2026-04-09 | |
| dc.description.abstract | The word “accent” in this title and lecture simply means,“The cumulative auditory effect of those features of pronunciation which identify where a person is from, regionally or socially” (Crystal, 2008:3).Once upon a time, probably, like many people here, I would have offhandedly erroneously answered that is pronunciations like “shorsh” and “sors” were due to poor oral English skills or the influence of Nigeria's indigenous languages. Over my years of research, however, I have found out that the matter is much deeper. Trying to empirically find the reason(s) behind mispronunciations is what has kept me in my chosen special area of interest, that is, Sociophonetics, and informed the topic of today's inaugural lecture. Sociophonetics is a combination of the concerns of sociolinguistics and phonetics. Sociolinguistics is defined by Crystal (op.cit.) as “A branch of linguistics which studies all aspects of the relationship between language and society” (440), while phonetics is “The science which studies the characteristics of human sound making, especially those sounds used in speech, and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription” (363). Both sociolinguistics and phonetics are under the broad umbrella of Linguistics, which itself simply means “the scientific study of language” (Crystal, 283). | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://repository.acu.edu.ng/handle/123456789/1857 | |
| dc.publisher | Ajayi Crowther University | |
| dc.title | “Shorsh,” “Sors,” or “Church” - Who cares? Accents and Linguistic Capital in Nigeria | |
| dc.type | Technical Report |