ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how language ideologies concerning variation and, more particularly, the social semiotics of 'dialect' and evaluates by the players themselves. A dialect can be different things to different people in different contexts. 'Dialect' can therefore be a term for different 'codes', but also a term that highlights 'substandard' speech practices in contrast to normed and standardized language. In youth languaging and in subversive uses of Naija alike, decentering and decontextualization happen in extreme ways: not much is left intact, and ruination is so profound and so present that it acquires a very prominent place in meta-discourse. Entering words into an online dictionary turns into a revolutionary action that assigns considerable agency to each individual, who is at least making a new language. The hosts, two Nigerian web designers, present themselves as free-spirited and original: 'Naija boys that enjoy speaking pidgin and take it a little too seriously'.
