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The Case for Promoting the Nigerian Pidgin Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Ike S. Ndolo
Ike S. Ndolo
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of Human Communication Studies, Howard University, Washington, D.C.
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Extract

Nigeria is a nation of tremendous socio-cultural diversities – in historical background, ethnicity, religion, belief, and especially language, which more often than not is the strongest factor giving identity, harmony, and continuity to ethnic groups, shaping the perceptions of their members. John Paden sees language as ‘a major mechanism of social communication between sub-systems …and… of expressing values, culture and ethnicity within a sub-system’.1 It is easy to see, in this light, how the most difficult problems of the entire political fabric of Nigeria are related to its great diversity of language.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , December 1989 , pp. 679 - 684
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

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