Sociolinguistics of Lesotho English in the Kingdom of Lesotho

𝑬𝒏𝒈𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒉 This study set out to investigate Sociolinguistics of Lesotho English in the Kingdom of Lesotho. Mainly premised on the principles of the qualitative research design and methodology, this study adopted the narrative interviews, rapid and anonymous observations as well as documentary sources for data collection in answer to the research questions. The research questions which this study set out to answer for achieving the research objectives are as follows: Is there any emerging variety worthy of the name Lesotho English (LesE) amongst the Basotho in Lesotho? If any, to what extent is such a variety critical in defining LesE at the levels of phonology, morphosyntax and lexicon? and How does LesE differ from Sub-Saharan Southern African Englishes, particularly Black South African English (BSAE) and/or other World Englishes? With the above questions, the study has, therefore, made general observations of linguisticvariations at the levels of phonology, morphosyntax and lexicon of LesE from both the oral and written data sets for this study. In particular, using the above-mentioned instruments for collecting oral and written data from the target participants, the study has found systematic salient phonological variations from English which I assume to be BrE. The findings include recurrent spelling pronunciations, syllable-timing, aspiration, missing contrastive stress and syllabic consonants, diphthongal and neutralised vowel sound patterns as well as substitution of interdental fricatives across the oral data on LesE in the context of Lesotho. Further, the morphosyntactic variants discovered from the data comprise the progressive aspect and levelling of the preterite and perfect aspect, the modal system, grammatical and notional concord, relativisation, pronominal appositions, the article system and prepositional usages. Qualitative evidence has thus revealed systematic morphosyntactic variants from the oral and written data for this study, thus highlighting features, possibly unique to LesE and/or comparable to other outer-circle, and, to some extent, inner-circle varieties of English. Similarly, at the lexical level, LesE has been found to bear systematically salient lexical and orthographic variants, coupled with alternative spellings, heteronyms and dehyphenated compound words and sporadic variants of semantic extension. It is, therefore, concluded, in this study, that sociolinguistics of LesE in the Kingdom of Lesotho could be seen as bearing nativised, endonormative and exonormative variations of English, making LesE a comparably emerging English variety to other outer-circle and inner-circle Englishes. ___________________________________________________________________