AKWA IBOM STATE UNIVERSITY JOUNAL OF ARTS

This study examined the acoustic analysis of stress in the Educated Nigerian Accent of English (ENAE). The aim is to identify and characterize the nature of this variety of English. Consequently, twenty subjects (20) out of sixty (60) subjects who are Nigerian English speakers and educated in the English language were selected by a Stratified Random Sampling (SRS) technique. A native speaker of English was used as control. Education in the English language was the major criterion for stratification. The subjects were selected from two Federal Universities in Nigeria and they were required to read a short passage containing selected words in citation form and selected utterances at normal conversational speed into an audio-device. Their performances were recorded and analyzed acoustically using a computer software called ‘Praat version 5.3 (2023.)’ to dictate the variations within and across the three categories: A (BA students), B (MA Students) and C (PhD Students). Their performances were compared with those of the native English speaker who served as control. Attached mainly to the Metrical Theory (MT), the study showed that in the ENAE, typified by the subjects (representatives), the ENAE speakers have a tendency to stress more syllables than the native speaker (control) which corroborates other researchers such as Udofot (2011), Eka (2011) and Gut (2003); the stress pattern of the ENAE differs significantly from that of the native speaker’s variety (control).

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