Abstract
This research examines the Nigerian Pidgin English from a pragmatic point of view using the radio presentation ‘Oga Driver’ as a case study. It pays particular attention to the speech acts employed by the presenter to communicate his intention.A descriptive qualitative design was used in conducting the research. Data for the research were collected using a mobile phone, from the utterances of the presenter of ‘Oga Driver. Selected speech acts were classified according to Austin and Seale’s classification of locutionary and illocutionary acts. A simple frequency and percentage were used to calculate the number of occurrences of each type of speech act. The most frequently occurring locution is the declarative which occurs 30 times with a frequency of 75.0%. The illocutionary act that occurs most frequently is the directive with a frequency of 40%. On the basis of the findings, it can be concluded that the Nigerian Pidgin English in radio presentations is used not just as a means of entertainment but also as a language with growing functionality capable of performing the same linguistic functions as the English language and other languages.
Keywords: Pragmatics, Speech act theory, Pidgin English, Radio, ‘Oga Driver’
