By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi I have stated several times that one of the goals of this column is to equip my r...
By Farooq A. Kperogi,
Ph.D.
Twitter:@farooqkperogi
I have stated several times that one of the goals of this
column is to equip my readers with what I have called “multi-dialectal linguistic
competence in English.” In my December 23, 2012 column titled “Q and A on Outdated Nigerian English Words and Expressions,” for instance, I
outlined multi-dialectal linguistic competence in English as follows:
“By that I mean being familiar with the forms,
peculiarities, points of similarities and dissimilarities, etc. between the
major dialects of the English language—British English, American English,
Nigerian English, etc. For instance, when I’m in Nigeria—or when I speak with
Nigerians—I have no anxieties about saying I will ‘flash’ somebody. I know I
will be understood as saying that I will call their cell phone number briefly
and hang up before they pick my call. But my multi-dialectal competence in
English would ensure that I never say that when I am in America or in the UK
because I could be (mis)understood as saying that I want to briefly expose my
naked body in public.
“Similarly, a Nigerian who has multi-dialectal linguistic competence
in English would use ‘go-slow’ in Nigeria to mean a traffic jam, but would know
enough to know that in the UK ‘go-slow’ means a ‘form of protest by workers in
which they deliberately slow down in order to cause problem for their
employers.’ A Nigerian who tells his boss that he is late to work because of a
go-slow could lose his job because he could be mistaken as implying that he is
on a one-man industrial protest.”
On a regular basis, I receive a steady stream of emails from
readers who tell how reading my column saved them from falling victims to
well-executed Nigerian 419 scams purporting to be from the US State Department.
They were saved, they said, by encountering some of the dead stylistic
giveaways of Nigerian English that I’ve pointed out in my columns. For example,
someone was saved by the appearance of the expression, “reply me as soon as
possible” in an otherwise deceptively well-written email. She said she escaped
being duped because she had read in my previous columns that native English
speakers always say, “reply TO me,” “not reply me.”
As recently as a week ago, someone wrote to tell me he
received a professional, well-crafted email purporting to be from the US State
Department informing him that he had won the US Green Card Lottery. He was told
to wire some money to a US bank account, and he was prepared to send the money
until he came across this phrase: “We need the money to enable us process….” He
wrote: “I immediately knew this was written by a Nigerian because I recall
reading several of your articles where you said native English speakers always
include a ‘to’ after the word ‘enable’ and that it’s a feature of Nigerian
English to exclude it.” He called the US State Department and was told that he
was the potential victim of a scam. These sorts of feedback gladden me
immensely.
Nigerianisms in Fake
Pro-Buhari Trump Quotes
But, apparently, Buhari social media minions have not the
vaguest familiarity with multi-dialectal linguistic competence in English,
which explains why, like Nigerian 419 scam artists, they are scamming people
with fake pro-Buhari Trump quotes that drip wet with hilarious, easily
detectable Nigerianisms. I will analyze only the most popular one here.
The most popular fake pro-Buhari Trump quote that circulated
on Nigerian social media went something like this: "I stand with you the
number one African president. I support you my fellow president. Your integrity
is second to none. I am at your back in spirit, physical and in faith. Go on
with your anti corruption fight against crooks in your country. I support you
President Muhammadu Buhari. God is also with you."
The quote is so staggeringly comical in its fakeness it provoked
a burst of deep, loud, hearty laughter in me when I first read it. First, the
cadence of the sentence is unmistakably Nigerian. So is the syntax. But the lexis
was the giveaway. “I am at your back” is a calque formation (as linguists call
direct, unidiomatic translation from one language to another) from almost all Nigerian
languages I am familiar with. It means “I support you.”
Although British English occasionally uses the idiom “at someone’s
back” to mean literally pursue or metaphorically support, it is entirely absent
in American English. The closest idiom to “at someone’s back” in American
English (which is also present in British English and other native English
varieties) is “behind one's back,” which means “in one's absence; without one's
knowledge; treacherously; secretly.” So if Trump said something about Buhari
behind Buhari’s back, it would mean he said an unkind thing that he wouldn’t
want Buhari to hear.
And, of course, “in spirit, physical and in faith” is ungrammatical,
structurally ungainly, and out of synch with the natural rhythm of
native-speaker speech. In other words, it’s not a construction any native English
speaker would make. It violates the rules of what is called parallelism in
grammar, that is, the “use of successive verbal constructions in poetry or
prose that correspond in grammatical structure, sound, meter, meaning, etc.” “In
spirit” and “in faith” are prepositional phrases, but “physical” is quaintly syntactically
orphaned in the sentence. To make the sentence obey the rules of parallel construction
(or parallelism), it should have been rephrased as, “in spirit, in physical
form, and in faith” or, better yet, “spiritually, physically, and in faith.”
Even then, it would still be a nonsensical sentence, one
that no native English speaker would ever utter even in a state of drunken stupor.
Most importantly, though, American speech outside religious circles is never
suffused with outward displays of religiosity. In my recent peer-reviewed
academic journal article titled, “‘Your English Is Suspect’: Language, Communication, and the Pathologization of Nigerian Cyber Identity Through the Stylistic Imprints of Nigerian E-Mail Scams,”
I observed that “inappropriate, exhibitionistic expressions of religiosity” is
an enduring feature of Nigerian English, which is being exported abroad by
Nigerian 419 scam artists.
I wrote: “For instance, in quotidian Nigerian life, identity
is performed through the exhibitionistic preening of the rituals and idioms of
religiosity. In particular, the vernacular of Nigerian Pentecostal Christianity
has emerged as a fundamental source of Nigerian English. The linguistic seepage
of the vernaculars and registers of Nigerian Pentecostalism into popular
Nigerian English occurs primarily through Nollywood movies, from where it
percolates into the Nigerian news media and later to the general population.
Nigerian Pentecostal Christian English codes have now become so widespread that
even Nigerian Muslims and non-Pentecostal Nigerian Christians have
unconsciously co-opted them in their conversational repertoires, and this is
inflected in the language of both honest and fraudulent Nigerian email writers”
(Journal of Communication Inquiry,
2018, p. 18/19).
In addition, Trump is not religious. For instance, according to CNN, on July 28, 2015, conservative Christians asked him if he ever
seeks God’s forgiveness for his sins. He said he doesn’t. “I think if I do
something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don't bring God into
that picture. I don't," he said. He also does not go to church. During a
campaign stop in August 2015, for instance, he lied that he was a “Presbyterian
Protestant” who worshipped at the “Marble Collegiate Church” in New York. The
very next day, the church issued a statement saying although Trump’s late
parents were “active members” of the church, Trump “is not an active member of Marble," a polite way to say he lied about
being a member of the church.
A man who told Christian leaders to their faces that he
doesn’t seek God’s forgiveness, who says he doesn’t "bring God” into his
everyday affairs would never say to a visiting foreign president, “God is also
with you." It’s a transparent fabrication.
A Google search of the quote yielded 81 results, all of
which were Nigerian web pages and social media mentions. The quote appears to
have been fabricated by a Lauretta Onochie, Buhari's social media aide, and
spread by Buhari Media Center operatives. Unfortunately, they don’t have the
multidialectal linguistic competence in English to make it sound American—or at
least Trumpian.
Another fake Trump quote goes as follows: "Mr Jonathan
Goodluck. The government of Nigeria and Most Nigerians say you are a thief. You
looted their country. If you really feel it is a lie, why not sue someone in a
court of law to clean up your legacy as a looter--Donald Trump.” Yet another
goes: “Why I did not talk about Biafran issue with President Buhari. They have
a history of criminality with more of them in almost every country jail in the
world. So I don’t think they are worth enough to acquire a country of their
own.”
These quotes are so incompetently fake as to be unworthy of
any analysis. Even by the standards of Nigerian English, they are illiterate.
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