Utility, Status and Languages in Competition in Middle Belt Nigeria

Abstract

The diglossic principle implanted into sociolinguistic discourse in the late 1950's afforded a conceptual frame where traditional paradigms and novel parameters for theorizing language within multilingual management coincide and interpenetrate. To Nigeria's multilingual situation, the principles of triglossia have been introduced on two conceptual levels: policy management and public response to policy. However, dimorphous symbiosis between policy guidelines and the attendant applicatory dispositions has attracted inconsistencies in public response to language management strategies and goals. Rendered inadequate, are the adopted triglossic principles which stand in variance with the linguistic realities they are designed to explain. This paper examines first the constructs where contradiction and inconsistency on the levels of policy management and theory stem. Given the conflictual relation between language policy and public response, this paper also examines conditions that intervene to dictate the patterns of language behavior. The tenet that the character of the contemporary language management in Nigeria encourages linguistic behaviors autonomous of policy dictates is affirmed. Particularly in the Middle Belt, language behavior guided by minority group-based social benefit (utility) rather than policy goal is privileged.