Abstract:
Pidgin languages arise as a vernacular resulting from the contact situation between speakers of different native languages who are in dire need of communicating ideas and experiences. Nigerian Pidgin (NP), a contact language, has been up for investigation by researchers who have mainly investigated its status, future, and the attitude of Nigerians to the pidgin language. Other scholars have been interested in the language structure of the language, thereby, noting its grammatical features such as its limited vocabulary, borrowings; tense, number and gender elements. This research takes a different approach to the study of NP by interesting itself with two kinds of experiences projected in Cognitive Linguistics and Systemic Functional Linguistics, investigating the presence of Conceptual Metaphors (CMs) in NP expressions spoken by NP speakers during selected radio programmes of Wazobia FM and Naija FM in Rivers State. It also investigates and analyses the extent to which the NP clause readily makes itself available to the workings of the resources of the Transitivity System. Nine (9) audio recordings of both call-in and news report programmes from Wazobia FM and Naija FM formed the data for the research work. The study finds that the two kinds of experiential dwellings in all languages, conceptual metaphors, and transitivity resources, are fundamental to the effective communication of NP among its speakers. It also confirms the hypothesis of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) that CMs are products of culture by finding the sameness of CMs existing between the NP expressions and their translated English forms. This study also finds that Transitivity resources present in Nigerian Pidgin clause remain unchanged in the English translations even though it could accommodate more participants.
