ABSTRACT

This project, Language Loyalty and Language Preference a Case Study of Urhobo in the Multilingual City of Warri aims to investigate the sociolinguistic situation in the multilingual city of Warri using the Urhobo people in Warri as a case study. It also stands to check the loyalty strength of the Urhobo language speakers to the Urhobo language as well as knowing their choice of preferred language in general. The hegemonic language situation in the city of Warri is used to investigate the effect of pidgin on the Urhobo language. The theoretical framework of this research is Descriptive Linguistics adopting the approach of Lehmann (1999). This research employs the use of questionnaires as a tool for data collection which is analyzed using simple statistics method. A total number of 100 questionnaires were administered but only 72 were retrieved which consist of male and female; old and young respectively. This study, amongst its findings established that the city of Warri is a multilingual one which has pidgin as its predominant language. Pidgin is generally used by every average Urhobo person in Warri but choice of usage change, as the situation of the language user changes. The implication of this is that the Urhobo language is gradually fading away and losing its speakers.