Language Attitudes and the Issue of Dominance: The Nigerian Experience

Abstract

Globalization is affecting all facets of life. With eco-tourism and telecommunication technology providing information for all and sundry, our attitudes are bound to be affected linguistically. Ranging from the linguistic bias of an English woman who objected to the checking of a pronouncing dictionary because “the way I speak is English” Hayakawa (1964) to “ there has never been a language spoken by so many people in so many places” (Crystal 1997) the English language seems set to dominate the world as ‘an only language’. Fishman (1996) Kachru (1997) Bamgbose (2004) and Daramola (2004) have all expressed concern about the dominant status of the English language with a threat towards other languages in diaspora. This paper appraises the attitudes of the Nigerian elites vis–a- vis the dominating figure of the English language over the indigenous languages. It remarks the love-hate relationship stemming from the conflicting sentimental and instrumental attachment to the use of English in Nigerian education. The paper concludes that Nigeria as the largest black democracy in the world should evolve a more robust language planning policy towards the functional expansion and revalorization of the indigenous languages as extolled by LICCA.