Semantic Aspects of Standard British English and the Nigerian

Abstract

The article is devoted to the semantic level of the language, one of the most significant levels as distinguished from the British variant; in the Russian-speaking literature the study of the Nigerian variant is carried out in several directions: linguoculturology, sociolinguistics, contact linguistics; but the number of works on this topic is insufficient. The purpose of this study is to analyze and structure the linguistic techniques used in the Nigerian variant. The paper considers a range of Nigerian idioms, their origins and semantic differences from their British counterparts, taking into account the works of Nigerian linguistic specialists. Attention is paid to the history of the spread of English in Nigeria and the immigration of the local population into the environment of speakers of the British variant of the language. Such aspects of language as semantic expansion (kinship terms, metaphors), semantic shift, borrowings, neologisms are investigated. The scientific novelty of this article lies in the creation of a complete semantic picture of the Nigerian variant of English. The results obtained can serve as material for further research in other areas of linguistics, especially in the field of contact linguistics.