Audience Perception of Pidgin English Advertisements in Nigerian Broadcast Media (A Study of Benin-City).

Abstract

In a world of fierce competition and emergence of internet as a powerful, border-less media, gaining and retaining the attention of consumers and customers and persuading them to buy products and services through the broadcast media is becoming more challenging and important. Although advertising has been proved to be effective in providing market information about products and service, yet its understanding and comprehension to the masses has been questioned consistently. Thus, it is important for the advertisers, advertising agencies and the media to understand the role that languages played in reaching the target market audience with simple market information about products. This research examined audience perception of Pidgin English advertisements in Nigerian broadcast media using Benin-City as a reference point. The inhabitants of Benin-City municipal are mainly business men and women of various ethnic backgrounds mostly Hausas, Igbos and Yorubas; hence the use of Pidgin English is regarded as the best medium of public interaction and communication in carrying out their daily activities. These people mostly understand the ‘surface structure’ of communicated messages in Standard English language and several others cannot even comprehend at all. Hence, this study examined if Pidgin English holds the interest of audience when used as a vehicle for conveying advertising messages by the advertisers via the broadcast media and also find out if Pidgin English can help decrease misconception and misunderstanding as regards advertised products. It also intends to explore the potentials of the Nigerian Pidgin English as a language of public and mass communication in Nigeria. Survey research method was adopted in the study and 200 well-structured questionnaires were administered on the purposely selected respondents at random. Data gathered were analysed by the use of table constructs, frequency count and simple percentages. The findings of the research showed that Pidgin English usage in advertisements helps to reduce misconception and misunderstanding of advert information and also holds the interest of the audience when used as a medium of communication. Based on the findings of the study, the researcher recommended that the use of Pidgin English in advertisements should be encouraged. Since the study covers only Benin-City municipal, the researcher recommended for further study to find out whether the general public would embrace the culture of using Pidgin English language more often for broadcast programmes and perhaps adopts it as one of the country’s lingua franca.