Linguistic and Cultural Identity Endangerment: Investigating Nigerian Indigenous-Language-English Bilinguals’ Responses to Implications of their Linguistic Practices
Samson Olusola Olatunji
Linguistic Immersion Centre,
University of Ilorin,
Kwara State, Nigeria
+23480 6267 4466
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Linguistic and Cultural Identity Endangerment: Investigating Nigerian Indigenous-Language-English Bilinguals’ Responses to Implications of their Linguistic Practices
Abstract
This survey was carried out among Nigerian-language-English bilinguals to compare the extent of their use of the English Language with that of their indigenous languages and also find out if they are conscious of subjecting their indigenous languages as well as their cultural identities to avoidable extinction. Copies of a self-constructed eleven-item questionnaire validated at 91.4 Cronbach alpha were administered to two hundred bilingual undergraduates got through a multi-stage sampling procedure. One hundred and ninety-nine copies were useful and the data collected were analysed using frequency counts, percentages, and t-test statistical tools in answering three research questions and testing three null hypotheses. The findings revealed that Nigerian undergraduates speak more English more frequently than their indigenous languages for informal interactions, a slightly greater proportion of the female sample prefer to use English language in informal interactions, the use of English for informal interactions is more common among students of the private university than the public ones, there is no significant differences between the undergraduates from minority linguistic groups and those from majority language groups in their sense of foreboding on the likely death of their languages, there is no significant difference in readiness to change language behaviour patterns between minority language Nigerian students and their majority language counterparts, and there is no significant difference between males and females in their readiness to start using their indigenous languages for informal transactions in other to save such languages.
Keywords: Language extinction, indigenous languages, cultural supermarket, biculturalism
The Language Situation in Nigeria and the Place of the English Language
Nigeria is acknowledged to have up to 500 indigenous languages, each with its various dialects (Ikekeonwu 2011). Three of the languages (namely Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo) are designated national languages (Adegbija, 2004; FGN, 2004). The national language policy stipulates that the language of immediate environment be used as medium of instruction until the end of the third year in every primary school. Where such a language is without orthography, the language that is predominant in the larger community serves the purpose until English, hitherto a school subject, takes over progressively as medium of instruction from the fourth year (FGN, 2004).
A credit pass in English Language at the Senior Secondary School Certificate level is compulsory for admission to any programme in a Nigerian university as well as the Arts and Social Sciences in other tertiary institutions. A pass in English Language may secure admission to some technical courses in polytechnics, provided there are not many other applicants with various degrees of credit passes. English is Nigeria’s first and, in fact, the only functional official language as French proclaimed as the second during Late Gen. Sanni Abacha’s regime has not been visible in that realm.
English is well acknowledged as the instrument for mutual intelligibility among the many constituent linguistic entities, the medium of governance, administration, judiciary, entertainment, and international relations. It is the language that confers the greatest prestige on its speakers in Nigeria, the language with which the privileged fluent speakers intimidate and mesmerise non-speakers or incompetent speakers.
Language as a Component of, and Vehicle for Culture
Mathews (1998:1) takes a comprehensive view of culture by defining it as both the way of life of a people and “the identities proffered in the cultural supermarket: the array of worldwide cultural forms through which people in today’s mass-mediated world pick and choose aspects of who they are”, concluding that “culturally shaped selves shape themselves from the cultural supermarkets”. The metaphor of a cultural market connotes that the culture that a person, and consequently a people, imbibes eventually is that which the person sees as prestigious and thus purchases in exchange with their original culture. A sort of mental trade by barter that results in a people’s replacement of their material and non-material cultural heritage with new ones while participating in globalisation processes.
The corollary is also true: a people considered, rightly or wrongly, prestigious and enviable can transmit their culture beyond their geographical boundaries. Their culture thus keeps on subsuming and eradicating the others. This is the privilege that the western culture enjoys now. It continues to spread widely like fire in the harmattan while its recipients lose their inherited cultures. The mass-mediated cultural market can be better understood from Browne’s (2008) description of the roles of communication technology like the internet, music downloads, cable, satellite and digital television, film and radio, printing in making available innumerable and diverse cultures to people from all over the world, from which they can pick and mix without necessarily leaving their own geographical locations.
Browne (2008) sees culture as the language, beliefs, values and norms, customs, dress, diet, roles, knowledge and skills, and all the other things that people learn that constitute the shared ‘way of life’ of any society. Language is thus one of the components of a people’s culture. The knowledge of their beliefs, values and norms and so on is expressed and transmitted from generation to generation through the instrumentality of language. A people’s national or cultural identity is completely mingled with the language they speak (Hashanat, 2012).
Mathews’ (1998) observation is that the shaping influence that linguistic practices have on learnt culture is so subtle that people are usually unable to bring it to the realm of consciousness. We think in language and language shapes our social interactions, which eventually mould our cultural practices. Jannarone (2006) observes that the native language
spoken by an individual is likely the strongest social identity. By extension, one could assert that the native language spoken by a community of people is likely their strongest cultural identity. But we take the cause-and-effect relationship for granted. Other scholars (Joseph, 2006; Val and Vinogradova, 2010) have also acknowledged the strong influence of language on maintenance or extinction of cultures and exposure two languages is catalytic alteration of cultural identity. Bilingual and bicultural identity negotiations are thus shown to be inseparable parts of the same phenomenon of identity negotiation.
According to Orjinta (2013), no reference to any language can be complete without reference to the people that speak it. Words in a language express the socio-cultural lives of its speakers. The norms and behaviours that constitute culture are constructed and deconstructed in interaction with relevant others (Lüdi, n.d.). A good example can be drawn from Nguyen’s (1999) observation of a considerable difference in use between a group of American student essay writers and their Vietnam counterparts. Nguyen observed that the Vietnamese applicants’ essays were presented as requests while their American counterparts wrote theirs as statements. The pre-occupation of the Americans seemed to be self-promotion while the Vietnamese students seemed to be simply pre-occupied with stating the facts and leaving the interpretations in the court of the reader.
Sumaryono and Ortiz (2004), realising the fact that the cultural identity of an English language learner in a second language context is endangered, recommend deliberate efforts at helping the English language learners preserve their cultural identity. One of such ways is to create classroom situations that would require that the learners find corresponding terms from their indigenous languages for certain English language concepts, proverbs, aphorisms, idioms, and so on. Annual or termly Cultural Days can also be instituted in our schools and such must be elaborately celebrated to effect significant excitement in the learners.
Ample opportunities must be created for second language learners of English to interact with peers from their own groups and to speak their ethnic languages because doing so will have a definite effect on their cultural identity (Phinney, Romero, Nava, Huang, 2007). Without adequate practice in a language, such a language cannot be well mastered. The “no-vernacular” rules that are enforced in schools must be limited to the four walls of the schools and other strictly formal settings.
Young (2008), however, argues that identifying language with identity is an oversimplification. But the volume of theoretical as well as empirical evidence of the influence of language on cultural identity can be considered too overwhelming for Young’s reservation (Kim. 2003; Warschauer, and De Florio-Hansen, 2003; Wigglesworth, 2005; Jaspal, 2009; Mercuri, 2012).
The Language Preferences and Practices of Bilingual Nigerians
Adopting Mathews’ (1998) three consciousness levels of cultural shaping, one can also identify three levels at which contact with English Language shapes the linguistic choices of Nigerians. The level that is deeper than the others is the “taken-for-granted level” characterised by those practices that we see as natural (p.9). For bilingual Nigerians, speaking English may come so naturally at times that it does not appear like a deliberate choice. This is understandable and pardonable. But it is noteworthy that such spontaneous code-switch cannot occur often.
The second, middle level, is what he calls “shikata ga nai” in Japanese translated as “it can’t be helped” or “there is nothing I can do about it” level (p. 10). For example, no Nigerian can independently decide not to learn the English Language without grave implications for their participation in school curricular and extra-curricular activities. English Language has been socially and institutionally imposed as a subject that must be passed as well as the language of instruction from the fourth year of elementary education through the various stages of the university level.
The third, which is the shallowest and the most conscious, is the “cultural market” level (p. 11). It is the level at which each person freely picks what language to employ at what time, for what reason, for what duration, and so on. This is the level that this study is most concerned with. It is the level over which the indigenous-language-English bilingual Nigerian has full control, and can consequently be held responsible. A word, phrase or sentence of English language may naturally escape one’s mouth occasionally simply because of the existence of the abundance of its lexicon in one’s personal linguistic repertoire. It is compulsory to speak, read and write English in the formal settings of schools, offices and others. English language is inevitable during conversations among people from different ethnic groups in Nigeria for mutual intelligibility.
But a Nigerian that chooses to use English for informal interactions at home and social occasions among speakers of thee same indigenous language is guilty of what Ani (2012) calls “social violence against their language”. Such a person is guilty of not allowing their children to decide whether to prefer their indigenous language or English as they are being largely exposed to only one code, that which is not indigenous at that. The language and the culture of the concerned people will die if this self-abnegation is a general practice. When the language and the culture go extinct, people’s identity dies. For example, if no one speaks Yoruba again in about fifty eighty years’ time, there cannot be any group of people known as Yorubas again though the people continue to procreate. Their children born after the extinction of the language and culture will no longer be Yorubas. They will have become self-marginalised in an age that others fight tooth and nail against marginalisation. Their parents would have imposed identity genocide on them. The most terrible consequence is that the English man would refuse to see them as his siblings, no matter how proficient they become in the use of the English Language.
If a Yoruba person from Nigeria who cannot speak his native language and does not cherish his cultural heritage is to answer the questions, “Who are you?” the answer to which is essentially his identity (Fagan, n.d.) and “How Yoruba are you?”, perhaps it will dawn on such a person how much un-Yoruba he is. Of course, does an individual have the right to claim to belong to a tribe when they cannot speak the language of such a tribe and possess no distinctive feature of the tribe? At the global level, if every trait that marks a people out from other peoples is lost, can the concerned people still claim the same identity as their ancestors?
Even many Nigerians prefer to converse in English with members of their own family because they cannot speak the languages of their parents, not to talk of writing them (Udofot, 2010). Traditional rulers, Obas, Igwes and Emirs who are supposed to be custodians of their peoples’ linguistic and cultural heritage, are fond of addressing their subjects in English (Owolabi, 2006). If the extent of time spent in interaction with peers and significant others impacts on one’s ethnic or cultural identity (Phinney, Romero, Nava, and Huang, 2007), one then wonders what happens where the peers have placed another language above their indigenous language, with its cultural elements and now view anything indigenous as barbaric. Such people, according to Ani (2012), perpetrate “social violence against their language,” and their own cultural identity by extension. In fact, the crime can also be termed “ethnocide” (Stavenhagen, 1995). Otcu’s (2010) finding from a study that the Turkish language is the primary means to construct a Turkish cultural identity in the U.S should be instructive to those neglecting their indigenous languages. If Tomlinson’s (2003) description of cultural identity as a treasure and power is anything to go by, then those who mindlessly throw away the birthright of their cultural identity like the Biblical Esau are prodigals that prepare days of regret for their coming generations.
The Likely Future of Nigerian Languages and the Peoples’ Cultural Identities
Browne (2008:38) defines identity as how “individuals or groups see and define themselves and how other individuals or groups see and define them” and goes on to point out that socialising institutions, the mass media inclusive, play significant roles in identity formation. McRobbie-Utasi (n.d.) opines that the Skolt Sámi community’s unique culture remained practically unchanged until after the Second World War because of their relative geographical isolation.