LANGUAGE SHIFT; A CASE STUDY OF EDO LANGUAGE AND NIGERIAN PIDGIN IN BENIN CITY

ABSTRACT

For some time now, the area of language contact and shift has received a lot of attention by linguists and scholars. The focus of most of such endeavors has been to establish the extent at which language shift from one language to another by bilinguals/multilingual determine the status (health) of a given language. This sociolinguistic study in same vein is aimed at examining the preferred use of Nigerian pidgin in Benin City affects the indigenous language of the area. Language contact is agreed to be the mother of some language situation among which are language; shift, endangerment, loss, and extinction. All the aforementioned phenomena are different stages of negative status of any language. This study attempts to investigate and state whether Edo language is endangered. In this study, the researcher adopts the descriptive theoretical framework. Using this framework the researcher carries out a descriptive analysis of the language samples collected using the questionnaire and direct observation method of data collections. Through this linguistic investigation, the researcher examines the relationship between the indigenous language of Edo and Nigerian pidgin as used in Benin City. This research concludes that Benin City residents in their day to day communications prefer the use Nigerian pidgin to Edo language and this has in no small way affected (negatively) the use of the indigenous language. This research proffers possible steps to be taken in order to abate the danger of losing Edo language to the obviously dominant Nigeria pidgin in the nearest future.