Language in Society· 2026Q1
Beyond the gender binary: Variation and the social meaning of rhoticity in Nigerian English
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- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
Feminine-presenting male speakers in Nigeria, referred to as crossdressers, strategically use rhoticity (pronouncing non-prevocalic /r/) to index American-ness and cosmopolitanism, serving as a form of 'indexical inoculation' against social vilification.
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Key points
- Feminine-presenting male speakers (crossdressers) in Nigeria use rhoticity (pronouncing non-prevocalic /r/) strategically.
- Rhoticity is employed to index American-ness and cosmopolitanism, functioning as 'indexical inoculation' against social stigma.
- The symbolic capital of rhoticity in Nigeria is linked to its colonial entailments.
- Transgressing gender norms in Nigeria can evoke coloniality when colonial intertexts are used to resist Western gender ideologies.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Abstract Although Nigerian English is characterized as non-rhotic, this article combines variationist and linguistic anthropological approaches to show how rhoticity (non-prevocalic /r/) is employed across different gender identities in Nigeria. Of these gender identities, attention is paid to feminine-presenting male speakers locally referred to as crossdressers. As these crossdressers are vehemently vilified in the country, this article shows how they recontextualize rhoticity as a register shibboleth (Silverstein 2017) to index American-ness that is constitutive of glamorous cosmopolitanism for purposes of indexical inoculation. The article further argues that rhoticity has colonial entailments and that it is its colonial entailments that contribute to its symbolic capital in Nigeria’s linguistic marketplace. Given that Nigerian crossdressers’ gender practices get labeled as un-African, this article also argues that transgressing normative gender practices in Nigeria may evoke coloniality, when colonial intertexts are used to resist Western colonial (bio)logics of gender ideology and African languages. (African languages, colonialism, coloniality, gender in Africa, Nigeria, Nigerian crossdressers, Nigerian English, rhoticity, social meaning, stance, variation)
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Language in Society, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Linguistics and Language
Linguistics and LanguageSocial Sciences