"I Don't Send Anybody": Slang, Language Choice, and Resistance in Select Nigerian Novels

Nigerian novelists employ diverse linguistic strategies in their narratives so as to capture the wide-ranging dimensions of their literary engagement. Given the various linguistic strategies deployed by the Nigerian novelists in their writing vocation, the Nigerian novel has enjoyed a gamut of scholarly interpretations from the linguistic flank. However, slang, being one of the many linguistic strategies Nigerian novelists engage in presenting Nigeria's social experience in a picturesque manner, is yet to interest many a linguistic critic of the Nigerian novel. While this neglect tends to undermine the discursive functions of slang in a multilingual community like Nigeria, especially as a creative linguistic tool which language users rely upon to indicate resentment to actions and activities of others-actions that either lean towards being inimical or hostile to the slang users' existence, the neglect seems to be mostly steeped in the canonical conjecture that slang is an informal language of impolite discourse. If slang is taken as an inappropriate language facility, it devalues the meta-discursive significations that are embedded in the deployment of slang in interactive or conversational situations, as this seeks to explain.

Examining resistance through language with this model enables an understanding of how language is a constitutive part of struggle. Identity is, then, a matter of self-concept, of construction rather than of social categories, of what people think of others. As Figure 1 above indicates, resistance is the most powerful stimulus for the creation and distribution of slang. What this means is that people use slang as a form of identity, group solidarity, and as a linguistic tool of resistance, as this article demonstrates. Although it is not every member of a group that is oppressed by a dominant pattern of life, people are naturally influenced by situational imperatives to invent a slang term which they consider theirs, resisting the linguistic as well as social behaviour of non-members of their group or those who stand in opposition to the expression of their desires. Bradatan, cited above, argues that "[y]our language is not just something you use, but an essential part of what you are" (4). Language, then, is a cite of cultural struggle. It is a “safe haven in a refuge of smoldering emotions" (Fanon, cited in Flores-Rodriguez 28). In a similar way, Pierre Bourdieu's (1977) concept of habitus points to those aspects of people's life that index the way they use language. Habitus describes the socially acquired proclivities which are performed in many ways and contexts of talking and writing. Thinking in a parallel direction with Bourdieu, language has been described as "a functional code for expressing valued feelings, attitudes and loyalties" (Oni and Oke 145).

The study of slang indicates that while the majority of the slang terms are "conventional" English words whose meanings are semantically extended/shifted to cater for the communicative needs of speech communities/communes, others are formed/derived from Nigerian Pidgin English expressions. These pidginised slang expressions speak to members of a commune in an acute manner, presupposing a tacit agreement among users in their community of practice. The implication is that the pidginised forms may not be accessible to non-members of a speech community. This act of linguistic "dismembering" is an ultimate reason for the social construction of slang in the first instance.
It can, therefore, be argued that the slang terms function as discourse strategies which discourse participants work upon to resist people and situations they consider inimical to their existence, on the one hand and a discursive act of articulating a desire to do things the way one wants, on the other. This unveils the dynamic ways in which slang can be calibrated for the expression of dissent and the polemic contestation of identities. Slang is a concept that has social implications for the speaker and the listener. This goes a long way to counter the belief in certain linguistic quarters that slang is an impolite language used mainly by deviants. The investigation of slang words, as evident in the sampled Nigerian novels, shows that slang expressions differ considerably from standard language since there are obvious social, non-informal intentions of using slang. The use of slang in the Nigerian novel draws attention to the myriad of linguistic strategies Nigerian novelists rely upon in capturing the multi-faceted themes of their literary engagement.

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