Polysemy and Meaning Construction in Contemporary Nigerian Pidgin: A Cognitive-Semantic Investigation

Abstract

This study investigates polysemy and meaning construction in contemporary Nigerian Pidgin from a cognitive-semantic perspective. It examines how single lexical forms develop and accommodate related senses whose interpretation depends on linguistic context, communicative situation and speakers’ conceptual knowledge. The study adopts a descriptive mixed-methods design, combining qualitative cognitive-semantic analysis with quantitative frequency counts. The sample comprises 20 uterances selected from Nigerian social-media discourse, newspaper publications and interactions involving purposively selected physical interactions. The data are analysed according to lexical form, contextual meaning, semantic relatedness and cognitive mechanism of meaning extension. The analysis is anchored in Cognitive Semantics, particularly conceptualisation, prototype structure, radial categories, embodiment, metaphor, metonymy and contextual construal. The findings indicate that Nigerian Pidgin contains recurrent polysemous expressions whose extended senses are systematically related to their central or more concrete meanings. Metonymic, metaphorical, functional and concrete-to-abstract extensions constitute major patterns in the data. Expressions such as I don tire, the medicine dey work, Carry this bag go house, Use your head and I no wan reason am demonstrate how speakers exploit familiar experiential domains to construct meanings in new contexts. The study argues that polysemy in Nigerian Pidgin is not adequately explained as random deviation from Standard English. Rather, it reflects systematic processes of conceptualisation, categorisation and contextual meaning construction. The study contributes to the growing linguistic description of Nigerian Pidgin as a dynamic language with an organised and productive lexical-semantic system.