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Linguistic and Cultural Development of Nigeria

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Linguistic and Cultural Development of Nigeria LJ~GUISTIC A.ND CULTURAL Ol<.:VELOPMENT OF NIGERIA: I\tlASS MEDIA INFLUENCE AND lMPACr BY ABIGAIL ODOZI OGWEZZY LECTURER 0-0 - - DEPART IE T OF MASS COMMUNICATION UNIVli:nSITY OF LAGOS AKOKA - LACOS A PAPER PRESE. TED AT TilE 6'1'11 APN1LAC NATIONAL CONFERENCE A lrstrac-t '}'I,:,\, /'(//"',. cvnm itn:« the Role ofth c Tncd U) IIf tlt« /llIgIII,\'I/L' IIIld "11/1111'0/ .towtoinnont ql' Sig('I'IC1, , '1}('('ilh'C1/~\', il,/i!('/I.\'l'S oU th«: ,",'('I('I)"i(' media. If look. ••at broadcast regulations as 1'L'.I!,(ln/S IIIL' iSSIIL' 111/(1 opines tliat tli«: medic: through tts /JI'oJ{rafl"I/t1.\'lI/aIHJ visible our 'angllages and cultures. Delving into issues ofmessage packaging, the paper arguesthat II· 'If I"l'(t! {'rfl,I!1'UIIJIIIl'S CO/l ln: heifeR packaged To make them more attractive and (11I Tilt' net: )J'/~ ui! J)" J" 1,\ if /"./!.' \',' \ I'" 1/ /"'1 111/0 It.' IIIf' /lI'og nil/lilies, and thus the languages and cultures. If posits that the media is under-representing th« ilJ(/IJ:;T:IIIJ/1,V /'ffIHl/fI}{(J,V antl clI/11IreS in their programming and calls for a revisit to avoid another form of imperialism, especially in Theface of debates on media hegemony. It concludes that the media can help in the linguistic and cultural development of Nigeria. L,\'TRODLJCTtON Mcdiu is taken from the Latin word 'medius' which means middle. Communication media are different technological processes that facilitate communication. between (and are in till! middle of) the sender of a message and the receiver. Also, the same media 111,":';:II',t' ~':1Il be interpreted differently by two different sets of people (Croteau and IloYlh.':>,2000) ~'. Il"I\(',r,. (:"'l!!.!1' C"r\llll'l' /lilt! his ussocintes (1994). Signorielli and Morgan, 1990), argue that the media plays a homogeneous role for other wise Ilclc"ugcoc,,"p pPplllnl ions. They argue that immersion in media culture produces a "mainstreaming" effect whereby differences bused on cultural, social, and political characteristics are muted in consumers of media content. This raises a question on the impact of the mass media on the linguistic :1I1t1 cultural development of nations, especially Nigeria. TIl~ impact or media cultivation on cultural development seems to be in the direction of impcr ialixrn, as some scholnrs argue that the rise of the mass media is the central cause of rho decline in cultural preservation. They posit that the media has altered and transformed the vuy WI; Ihill!- !llId IlIlk about culture. This is in tandem with the position of the Canadian scholar Marshall Mcluhan, who posits that. "the mcululII ill tho mousuge'', The scholar argues that we should focus our attention on the ways each new medium disrupts tradition and reshapes social life.' if the influence of the media interests us. He does not base his argument on the content of the media but the ways the media alter out social world (Croteau uud l loyncs, 2000). Hither to the development or the n141~~media, 'our social roles and identities were closely tied to the physical places where we performed these roles. [However], with the advent of ... media .... old ruk:~i Hlld idl.·lllili~~111iXlIIlllJ blurred or rcconfigured in response to new kinds of social situations. This ... stresses the ways the media arc part of, and help shape I !II' '>'I\,illlllllil'II!' 111111 hy extension our culture, with its attendant linguistic implications (Croteau and Hovnes, 2UOO. JU/). L~"I'GUAGE, CULTURE, MASS MEDIA AND DEVELOPMENT According to Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, language affects culture and vice versa. 'The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is concerned with the possibility that man's view of his environment may be conditioned by his language» Essentially, the duo argue that 'a speaker's native language sets up a series of categories which act as a kind of grid through which he perceives the world and which constrain the ways in which he e:ll~'goriz~~ra~~d conccptuulises different phenomena' (Trudgill, 1974: 26 and 24). Language is a means through which a group of people learns to organise their CXpc'IIc'II\..~U'~IIl!III~H':\11'1 1\ rhild growing up learns to order and react to habits about his environment through language. According to Greenberg (I nl), IH/lI!1I0g is the prerequisite for the accumulation and transmission of culture. Such fundamental aspects of culture as organised political life, legal systems, religion and science are inconceivable without that most basic and human form tools, a linguistic system of communication. Language is not only a necessary condition, it is what distinguishes homo-sapiens from apes and other animals with high level of intelligence (Adcbayo, 1995), --. 2 Language itself is part or culture. l lowevcr culture is defined as a complete way of life of ;t gl'lllP (\I'l'L'(lpk, Thi" .ov 'rs their tradition, environment, and how they harness it, diet, music, dance, folklores, language, how they view their world, etc. Thua, it may be said that language is closely tied to culture and thus may account for why scholars are concerned about the linguistic threat faced by minority languages, especially in the face of the use of the dominant languages by the international and local mass media . .. According to Muhlhausler (1997:3) in Croteau and Hoynes (2000), 'Ninety percent of the world's latll',l1:I)',es arc threatened'. r .anguagcs are disappearing at a much faster rate today than they ever did in the past. When a language dies hundreds of thousuuds or experiences die with it. It represents nn incredible loss of diversity, culture..and identity for peoples across the globe. He predicted that out of about 6,500 global languages "1'"\ 'II hv SOllll' "i. ') hillinu people, the world may be left with just five - English, Spanish, Gernuui, io't cu It ilttd l\ 1,11111111111 III tit •... "1"'11 l't>III"fY, 'I'hia usscrtion it! 11little exaggerated due to the fact that every language of the world is in a continuous state or flux. For instance, we now have Nigerian Pidgin English (NPE), which evolved as a re-sult of English language coming in contact with Nigerian languages. In fact, Pidgin English has been developed orally in the Niger-Delta region by the people to such a high pedestal that it has taken many linguistic nuances of the indigenous languages, Even the 'Standard' English spoken in Nigeria is not exactly that spoken in Britain, the Nigerian J • element (e-al~l}ralinputs) have been added to it. Thus, while it may be true that English is a dominant language in Nigerian mass media at 1he dct rimcnt of other indigenous languages, the use of' some major indigenous languages ,Ii"t ! Wt', ,'\"., j"tl·. III 1111' 11I1'11I1( 11'11 111('dill i'l Oil III increase, Hence in looking at the roles of the media in the linguistic and cultural development of \:igcria, focus will be on the broadcast media, which allows the use of airwaves to transmit a media product directly to anyone who own a receiver. So, how did the broadcast media affect the consumption and development of media products in Nigeria? 3 • The development of broadcasting fundamentally altered the patterns of media consumption by creating till! possibility or a largely privutiscd und individuulised media experience from a general source, Public media experience such as cinema, concerts, are now being supplemented by TV, video, DVD and recorded music which people usually '11">1 'PI" " ill II,., "I i,'p,'v Ill' t lu-ir \lOI11('S (Crotcan and Hoyne 2000), It is unarguable that a world of cultural diversity is better than a world of monolithic culture, If it is not checked, it may result in cultural colonisation of the peoples of a developing country like Nigeria, as the values and the culture may gradually be suffering invasion, This concern prompted Herbert Schiller (1967), cited in Uche (1989), among others to argue that: 'foreign programmes will lead to new cultural pattern to the detriment of the indigenous cultures because once cultural patterns are established, they endlessly persist, uud us sucl: the rllleigll progruuuuos tIUII'xro broudcast over the local uctwo rk s of ,11('sl..' 11:I(i0I1Smay determine, in large measures, the cultural outlook and the social direction or the new nations for generations to come', Schiller is not alone ill this crusade, Katz (1973) says that continued dependence on foreign programmes would be These and many more may account for why the Nigerian national cultural policy recommends that: the media should be used for the dissemination of cultural and artistic products for the purposes of preserving Nigerian's cultural heritage; the media should enhance :Nigeria's cultural development by broadcasting the citizen's horizon, awakening their irnnpination and stimulating, their aesthetic awareness, values and creativity, Despite this recommendation, it is not likely that the mass media devote u reasonable time to airing foreign media products, as Uchc (1989: 8-1) says that 'N- 'rA' Two Channel rive, transmits more than ~O% of its hours on the air on foreign films.... He further says 11\,,1 \1\ (,~("" tll'I'lllei!'ll 1'1"l1l\lafllllll:Sarc shown at prime time on NTA Channel Ten. He :11'!!tlesthnt as a result of this, Nigeria is tied 10 the lIllI 011 t.trilll!,' (,f' tltr We,ll Rill III dill, and may be facing cultural conquest, (especially through the electronic media), 4 However, in his speech at the fifth anniversary celebration of the National Broadcasting Commission (N nC) in Abuja on till! 25th of August, 1997, Dr Walter Ofonagoro, attested to the fact that the situation has changed.
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