i UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA NSUKKA DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS, IGBO AND OTHER NIGERIAN LANGUAGES MULTILINGUALISM IN NIGERIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTING THE NATIONAL POLICY ON EDUCATION A Project Report Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award of the Degree: Masters of Arts (M.A) in Linguistics (Sociolinguistics) BY EZE, VICTORIA U. PG/MA/05/40072 SUPERVISOR: DR. C.U. AGBEDO AUGUST, 2010. i MULTILINGUALISM IN NIGERIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTING THE NATIONAL POLICY ON EDUCATION BY EZE, VICTORIA U. PG/MA/05/40072 SUPERVISOR: DR. C.U. AGBEDO DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS, IGBO AND OTHER NIGERIAN LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA AUGUST, 2010 ii APPROVAL PAGE This is to certify that Eze Victoria U. who is a postgraduate student in the Department of Linguistics, Igbo and Other Nigerian Languages, University of Nigeria, Nsukka has satisfactorily completed courses and project work for the Degree of the Master‟s of Arts (M.A.) in Linguistics. DR. C.U. Agbedo Prof. C.N Okebalama . Supervisor Head of Department DATE: DATE: . Prof. E.E. Okafor Dean External Examiner DATE: DATE: A member of Postgraduate Committee DATE: iii DEDICATION Wholly dedicated to the Almighty God. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENT For the successful completion of this project, I am sincerely grateful to my thesis supervisor, Dr. C.U. Agbedo, for the co-operation and pains he took in going through the whole manuscript and offering valuable advice to improve it. May God bless you abundantly. Encouragement for this work came from many sources – lecturers, relations and friends, to whom I now give sincere thanks. They include Prof. C.N. Okebalama, the Head of Department, Department of Linguistics, Igbo and Other Nigerian Languages. Mrs. Grace Prezi, Lecturer in the same department. May the Almighty God reward them. Finally, I will not forget to acknowledge the man that God has used to bless my life, my beloved husband, Mr. G.O. Omeje a lecturer in the Department of Agricultural Education, Federal College of Education, Eha-Amufu. He is always by side. May the Almighty God preserve him. Eze Victoria U. Department of Linguistics, Igbo and Other Nigerian Languages, UNN. v TABLE OF CONTENTS TITLE PAGE ................................................................................................ i APPROVAL PAGE ...................................................................................... ii DEDICATION .............................................................................................. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ............................................................................ iv TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................. v ABSTRACT .................................................................................................. vii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1. Background of Study ...................................................................... 1 1.2. Statement of the problem ................................................................ 3 1.3. Purpose of Study ............................................................................. 4 1.4. Significance of Study ...................................................................... 5 1.5. Scope and Limitation ...................................................................... 5 1.6. Research Questions ......................................................................... 6 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Theoretical Review………………………………...…………….. 7 2.2 Empirical studies ………………………………………………… 12 2.3 Language Policies in Multilingual Countries……………………. 17 CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 Design of the Study ........................................................................... 46 3.2 Area of Study .................................................................................... 46 3.3 Sampling and Sampling Procedures.................................................. 46 3.4 Instrument for Data Collection.......................................................... 47 3.5 Method of Data Analysis .................................................................. 48 3.6 Method of data analysis .................................................................... 48 3.7 Validation of Instrument ................................................................... 48 vi CHAPTER FOUR: PRESENTATION AND DATA ANALYSIS 4.1 Data Presentation and Analysis ......................................................... 49 CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 5.1 Summary…………………………………………………….. ……. 64 5.2 Conclusion…………………………………………………………. 64 5.3 Recommendations…………………………………………………. 66 REFERENCES APPENDIX: QUESTIONNAIRE vii ABSTRACT The main aims and objectives of this research were to identify the implications for implementing the national policy on Education in multilingual countries with special reference to the Nigeria situations. Theories of multilingualism and language planning were discussed. Four research questions were formulated to guide the study. The sample for the study consists of 200 respondents from ten purposively sampled schools in the Nsukka Education Zone. The instrument used for the study was the questionnaire. The data generated were analyzed using the mean of the responses of the respondents. The result shows that there is no problem in the implementation of language policy in a multilingual country like Nigeria. The result also shows that multilingualism affects teaching and learning and general performance of students and the educational system in Nigeria. Finally, the study identified that the use of mother tongue/indigenous language should be chosen to enhance academic performances of students and foster unity in Nigeria. viii 1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the study Multilingualism or bilingualism being a consequence of language contact has been so sensitive that so many scholars have made some theoretical and critical advances on the issues. There have been arguments that there is no such thing as total monolingualism in any country, not even in countries like the U. S. A., France, Germany etc, where there is only one official language used by the people. Trugil (1985), says that multilingualism involves speaking more than one language indigenously within a frontier. He stresses the fact that multilinguals is a case of the existence of so many indigenous languages in a particular nation or frontier. In their own study of multilingualism, Appel and Muyeken (1987) tried to distinguish two types of multilingual. Individual multilingualism and societal multilingualism. They describe societal multilingualism as that occurring in a given society where two or more languages are spoken. Individual multilingualism, to them is: the capability of using and understanding two or more languages. Bloomfield (1953) adds to this, by looking at individual multilingual as: that person who possesses native- like control of two or more languages. Kloss (1969) came up with a third type of multilingualism known as impersonal multilingualism. This is a sociolinguistic term he coined to refer to the phenomenon of multilingual usage in the mass media. This gives the idea of special use of many languages especially foreign language alongside the national language of a society. This concept came up during Kloss‟s (1969b) study of the communicational pattern and verbal strategies in Japan‟s mass media. Kirsten (1991) holds that what is true of bilingualism holds true also for multilingualism except where the context dictates otherwise. He goes on to describe a multilingual society as one in which two or more languages are used by large groups of the population. On the other hand, bilingualism is seen by Weinreich (1953) as “the alternative use of two languages”. Kristen (1991) still identified two situations of multilingualism in terms of status: what he calls horizontal and diagonal multilingualism. He says that if the languages spoken in a multilingual society have equal status in the official, cultural and 2 family life of the society, the situation is referred to as horizontal multilingualism. Canada, to him is a typical horizontal multilingual country. Diagonal multilingualism obtains only when one of the languages has official status. Tanzania is an example of a diagonal multilingual country. Pohl (1965) identifies what he calls vertical multilingualism. This is a case of diglossia, but one thing is that this involves dialects of the same language rather than different languages. So far, we have looked at different aspects of multilingualism as defined by various scholars, we shall now look at what the opinions of some of those scholars are on the issue of multilingualism and national development. Pool (1972), accounting for problems associated with language diversity in any nation says: Language diversity, it is claimed aggravates political sectionalism, hinders inter-group co-operation, impedes political enculturation, political support for the authorities, holds down government effectiveness and political stability. From his view, we can deduce that he has nothing good or rather positive for multilingualism. So, in a nation where linguistic differences are the major defining characteristic for which each group is known. It is most likely that the problems identified by Pool (1972) above will be very glearing. His observation is more on political problems caused by the existence of many languages within a nation. In her study of language diversity and national development in Europe, Jyotrinda