A Socio-Semantic Analysis of Code-Switching in Nigerian Universities
Keywords:
Language use, Socio-semantics, Nigerian university students, Social meaning, Code-switching, Lingua francaAbstract
Whatever one writes or speaks today is expected to carry a message that should be understood by readers or listeners as intended. This study focuses on socio-semantics of students code-switching and the fluctuation of societal language meaning and social meaning placed on codes of two or more conventional languages and their dialects in a conversation. Some university students who maintain their cultural dialect, language, and accent are viewed as “stupid,’ ‘inferior’ or ‘rudimentary’ by their peers. The theoretical framework adopted for this sociosemantic study is ‘conceptual analysis’ as explained by Lyons (1977:109) and Saeed (2003: 34-46, 266-76), Fishman’s (1972) “Domain and Topics” analysis and Labov’s (2006) “Quantitative Paradigm” analysis. Data was sourced from some selected universities; students in the universities constitute the study and population while three major instruments were used: unscheduled non-participatory observation, questionnaire and motivedetermination interview. Statistical Package for Social Sciences was used to analyse the variables on the questionnaires to present the results of the data collected. A summary of the findings is presented in tables for easy comprehension aimed at drawing a valid conclusion. The analysis shows that, domains of discourse and pragmatics, language use and meaning-making have significant impact on the Nigerian university students and it
was observed that the use of English language for a meaningful dialogue was almost impossible by students as result of the frequent code-switching. It also indicates that students use Nigerian languages to make meaning, due to their level of “proficiency in Nigerian languages compared to English language" and that, "they have more lexical items of their proficient language in their repertoire".
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