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Introduction
It is a fact that as we have British English, American English and Canadian English, we also have Nigerian English. Also, like American and British English, Nigerian English (NE) has its own varieties which include dialectal varieties such as Igbo English (I.E.), here studied, and diatypic variants, one of which is the Nigerian Army English studied byAmafa(1990).
NE has been defined as a 'dialect of the World Standard English which is generally a grammatically correct variety of English language used in Nigeria' (Ugwu, 1990:55). It possesses certain linguistic features which are specifically related to some aspects of the Nigerian environment, culture and indigenous languages. These features tend to nativize the use of English in Nigeria and can be identified in all registers of English language use, especially in culture-bound usage.
A clear picture of the development of English in Nigeria has rightly been presented by Bamgbose (1995: 26) in his observation that:
The English language has undergone modifications in Nigerian environment. It has been pidginized, nativized, acculturated and twisted to express unaccustomed concepts and modes of interaction. As a result, it is now a Nigerian English at par with other world Englishes... The challenge we now face is to intensify research on this English and codify it appropriately.
However, apart from the national variety of Nigerian English, mere are also etiinic varieties of English spoken in Nigeria. These ethnic Englishes are associated with ethnic group languages. The features of ethnic Englishes are manifest in speech, in the media, in creative writing, etc. The present work will explore the use, of ethnic Englishes in the literature of writers of Igbo origin - one of the major ethnic groups in Nigeria. The use, by these writers, of the deliberate stylistic device of projecting their Igbo identity has resulted in Igbo English (IE), one of the ethnic Englishes in Nigeria.
I.E. writers use English in a second language situation. It is a well-established fact that when speakers of one language learn a second language, they transfer some of the linguistic behaviours of their first language to their second language performance. This is often unconscious. However, when writers who are Igbo, for instance, write in English, they may have two classes of audience in mind - the Igbo...