Monophthongal Peculiarities of Audio-visual Cameroon and NigerianEnglishes Compared: the NURSE, STRUT, TRAP and START Vowels

Abstract

This paper sets out to comparatively describe the features of four RP monophthongs in Audiovisual Cameroon English (henceforth AVCamE) and Audio-visual Nigerian English (henceforth AVNigE) as produced by characters, preachers and musicians. The paper describes the realisations of the NURSE, STRUT, TRAP and START vowels and correlates them with interlinguistic, extralinguistic and intralinguistic features such as roleplay, L1interference and graphology. Data for the paper constitutes excerpts gleaned from One-hundred and fifty Cameroonian and Nigerian audiovisuals (movies, musicals and sermons); seventy-five from Cameroon and seventy-five from Nigeria. One-hundred and sixty consultants were sampled for this paper, with eighty male and female from Cameroon audiovisuals (henceforth CAs) and eighty from Nigerian audio-visuals (hereafter NAs). The data were collected from 2010 to 2022 and were qualitatively analysed using Comparative Linguistics and Phonostylistics. Findings reveal that despite the many similarities between AVCamE and AVNigE, several differences exist in the realisations of the NURSE, STRUT, TRAP and START vowels.