Haba! Bilingual interjections in Nigerian English: A corpus-based study

This paper explores five emotive bilingual interjections: haba, kai, chei, chai, and mtchew in Nigerian English, using the theory of pragmatic borrowing from a postcolonial corpus pragmatic perspective. The data, which were extracted from the Nigerian component of the Global Web-based English corpus, were subjected to both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The results show that haba and kai are borrowed from Hausa, chei and chai are loaned from Igbo while mtchew is an onomatopoeic interjection peculiar to many Nigerian indigenous cultures. The results also indicate that haba signals surprise, shock, anger, disapproval, disgust, distress, despair, disbelief, disappointment, and disagreement, kai, chai, and chei express feelings of surprise, sympathy, sadness, anger, pain, disapproval, and shock, while mtchew is shows anger, utter disgust, derision, disinterest and sadness. The study concludes that these emotive bilingual interjections further add to the distinctiveness of Nigerian English. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.