Transcultural creativity in world Englishes: Speech events in Nigerian English literature

Abstract

Drawing examples from the novels of two prominent Nigerian writers, Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe, the present paper explores the concept of transcultural creativity with particular reference to speech events in Nigerian literature.  These speech events relate to modes of address, prayers, invectives, ritual communication, panegyric, and the doric style.  The study indicates that, in contrast to code-mixed and pidginized varieties, transcultural creativity rejects reductive binarisms such as English/Yoruba, English/Igbo, and englishes/Englishes in favor of hybridity and cultural syncreticity that do not privilege center or margin but provide the potential means for establishing a dialectic between dominant and marginalized discourses.