This paper examined the imbalances created by social situations and captured in the English language usage by the
characters in Wole Soyinka’s The beatification of area boy. The play, set in the busy city of Lagos, is a theatrical
typification of the Nigerian society that creates variety differentiation in language use. The sociolinguistic data for
the analysis were extracted from the primary text. The findings indicate that, in the play, Soyinka succinctly displays
characters as linguistic pointers to showcase the peculiarities in Nigerian English usage that differentiate the
linguistic behaviours of Nigerians from other Englishes. The study reveals the categorisation of the ‘spoken’ varieties
into Nigerian Pidgin, Incipient bilingual, Local colour variety and the Nigerian literary variety. These features which
manifest at the phonological, semantic, lexical, syntactic and pragmatic levels altogether combine to represent the
typical linguistic situation in a non-native speaker environment. The linguistic variations, when juxtaposed with
sociolinguistic variables, explicitly express the domestic adaptations and modifications in English language usage
suggestive of the playwright’s representation of the Nigerian multilingual society.
Keywords: Nigerian English, English usage, varieties of English, sociolinguistic study, literature, wole soyinka