Full Title: Naijá na Hélélé: Nigerian Pidgin in the global, local and in-between contexts

Date: 02-Oct-2024 - 05-Oct-2024
Location: University of Ibadan, Nigeria
Contact Person: Odirin Abonyi
Meeting Email: [email protected]
Web Site: naijanahelele.com

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Computational Linguistics; Lexicography; Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics
Subject Language(s): Pidgin, Nigerian (pcm)
Language Family(ies): African Pidgins and Creoles

Call Deadline: 04-Aug-2024

Meeting Description:

Naijá (a.k.a. Nigerian Pidgin) has evolved over the last few decades to become the largest spoken and perhaps the most influential language in Nigeria. The current estimate of its speakers and users is placed at about 150 million with distribution across various continents. As a result of its mutual intelligibility with other West African Pidgins, it holds great potential as a veritable language for regional integration and sustainable development in the face of climate change and other environmental concerns.

The efforts of early Nigerian Pidgin linguists such as Mafeni (1971), Agheyisi (1971), Marchese and Shnukal (1981), Elugbe (1983), Elugbe and Omamor (1984, 1991), Mann (1984, 1993), Faraclas (1989, 1994) has contributed significantly to the diachronic, sociolinguistic, morphosyntactic description of Naijá. Since the turn of the Millennium, others have made contributions in studies related to its syntactic shifts, its prosodic paradigms, and its discursive trends and ideologies as observable in its use in literature, in entertainment and Nigerian Stand up Comedy especially, in the broadcast media for news/sports commentary and on air presentations, in Nigerian Hip Hop or Afrobeats as a revivalist trend reminiscent of Fela’s Yabbis songs of the 70s and 80s, in religious literature including Bible translations, and now as a language of the monolingual offline Naijá Dictionary (2024), and its online version Naijionary.

In the course of the last decades, the interventions for sustaining the growth of Naijá have been more individuated than coordinated through a synergy among users and practitioners in the different domains mentioned above. The institution of the Naijá Language Project (now defunct) in a 2009 Conference has until now been the major collaboration that brought its users and practitioners under an umbrella to forge the development of Naijá. The objectives of the Naijá Language Project were:
to research, facilitate research and/or publish research on the nature of Naijá (including scientific articles, journals, books, dictionaries etc)
to develop a standard and acceptable writing system/orthography for Naijá
to document, publish and/or facilitate the development of scholarly and non-scholarly, literary and non-literary materials on Naijá
to establish a scientific committee to govern and facilitate sound and original research on any aspect of Naijá
to develop a method for teaching and learning the Naijá language

These objectives remain unexplored to their fullest, necessitating this Conference which is an initiative designed to create an interactive forum for researchers, translators, language technologists, teachers, journalists, artistes and artists, skitmakers, poets, playwrights, policy makers, and many others. Its goal is to harness the growth of Naijá thus far and chart its further advancement under an umbrella body with members drawn from various communities in Nigeria, West, Central, Eastern and Southern Africa, the rest of the world.

Call for Papers:

This Call for Papers for the Conference themed "Naijá na Hélélé (meaning Naijá is Incredible) - Nigerian Pidgin in Global, Local and in-between Contexts," intersects, but is not limited to, the following major themes and sub-themes:

Major Themes:
Research & Education
Regional Integration
Ideology, Politics & Propaganda
Philosophy, Faith & Religion
Globalism & Nationalism
Gender, Identity & Sexuality
Digital Technologies & Artificial Intelligence
Linguistics, Literature & Media
Pidgins & Creoles in Comparative paradigms
Health & Wellness
Inclusion & Exclusion
Business & Economic Development

Sub-themes:
Sociolinguistics: Contact, Context, Usage, Varieties
and Variations, Attitudes etc.
Academia and Publishing in Naijá
Naijá Language in Sports
Naijá in Language and conflict
Naijá, Digital Humanities & Digital storytelling
Naijá Language Varieties
Naijá Lexicography and Grammar
Naijá Language Research
Naija, West African and World creoles
Metalanguage Development
Translation, Interpreting and Localisation
Orthography Development
Naijá and New Media
Historical and Comparative Naijá
Naijá and the New National language policy
Naijá Language Learning and Teaching
Naijá Curriculum Development
Naijá Corpus Development etc.

Guest Speakers

Kofi Yakpo
Hong Kong University
Keynote Speaker

Emmett Strickland
Paris Nanterre University
Lead Paper Presenter I

Prof. Christine Ofulue
National Open University Abuja
Lead Paper Presenter II

Convener – Naija Language Network
C/o: Professor F. O. Egbokhare

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Abstract Length: Not more than 250 words
Conference Mode: Hybrid
Presentation Types: Paper and Poster
Submission Deadline: August 4th, 2024
Notification of Acceptance: August 15th, 2024

To Send Submissions, Scan the QR Code below.

Languages of Submissions/Presentations:
Naijá (Nigerian Pidgin), English, and any other Pidgin and Creole Languages (with Audio-visual translations in English).

Links
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.naijanahelele.com
Form Link: https://forms.gle/BfsCCc5cLrmugysc7

Conference Registration
Early Birds - Scholars: N20,000
Late Birds - Scholars: N25,000

Fee
Students: N10,000

Local Bank
GT Bank (savings)
Abonyi Odirin Victor
0031516151

Foreign Participants

Early Birds
African Scholars: $80
Non African Scholars: $100

Late Birds
African Scholars: $95
Non African Scholars: $120

Students Fee
African Students: $20
Non African Students: $30

Domiciliary account
GT Bank (USD)
Abonyi Odirin Victor
0749310133

Date: October 2nd - 5th 2024
1st - Arrival
2nd - 4th - Conference
5th - Naiiá Festival Ends
6th - Departure
Venue: Academic Staff Union of Universities Secretariat, University of Ibadan Extension, Ajibode

For enquiries:
E-mail: [email protected]
Call or Send WhatsApp Chat: +2348166550860