English nativization in Chinua Achebe's anthills of the savannah and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah

Abstract EN

The present paper attempts to identify the main aspects of English nativization as a sociolinguistic phenomenon in the African Novel in English.

Also, it highlights its usage in two novels written by two Anglophone African writers from different generations.

To accomplish the research work objectives, Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah are selected as the study corpora.

The paper adopts a sociolinguistic framework with a descriptive approach to analyze the target literary texts.

In doing this, the two researchers explore different features of English nativization in the two works such as literal translation of proverbs and idiomatic expressions, Pidgin English, code switching, and neologism or coinage.

These aspects reveal the particular characteristics of the language in Anglophone African fiction and construct a new variety of English that shapes and provides an authenticity to the African novel in English.