ABSTRACT
This study investigates language Choice in the Ɔkere speech community in the Eastern region of Ghana, Ɔkere is a Guan language belonging to the Kwa language family. The study gives a broad perspective of language contact involving two unequal languages and the linquistic outcomes. This is done in reference to language shift and language maintenance. Instruments employed for data collection were questionnaires and unstructured interviews. Data was sourced from homes, churches, schools, hospitals and other public places in the three communities which are Abiriw, Awukugua and Adukurom.
The study brought to light the degree of bilingualism within the Ɔkere speech community due to their exposure to languages such as Twi, Dangme, Ga, English, etc… which has resulted in a high incidence of competence in a variety of languages. In view of this, members of the Ɔkere speech community have a variety of languages at their disposal to serve their communicative needs. The findings established that notwithstanding the urge for what Dolphyne (1982:52) describes as “group identification” members of the Ɔkere speech community have adopted a peculiar pattern of language use to satisfy their communicative and economic needs. This however is a strategy by the Ɔkere speech community to maintain their heritage language.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION…………………………………………………………………………………… i
DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………………………… ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT…………………………………………………………………….. iii
ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………………. iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………………………………….. v
LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………………………………… viii
LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………………………. ix
CHAPTER ONE……………………………………………………………………………………. 1
GENERAL INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………. 1
CHAPTER TWO…………………………………………………………………………………. 12
LITERATURE REVIEW, THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS AND METHODOLOGY 12
- Introduction………………………………………………………………………………… 12
2.3.1. Research Community…………………………………………………………….. 47
CHAPTER THREE……………………………………………………………………………… 53
VARIATIONS IN LANGUAGE CHOICE AT ƆKERE…………………………. 53
3.2.1 Respondents Settlement Patterns………………………………………………. 59
3.3.1 Linguistic repertoire of respondents………………………………………….. 61
3.5.2. Language Use in Church……………………………………………………….. 73
CHAPTER FOUR……………………………………………………………………………….. 90
CASE STUDIES…………………………………………………………………………………. 90
CHAPTER FIVE……………………………………………………………………………….. 108
SUMMARY, KEY FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS……………. 108
Appendix I………………………………………………………………………………………… 114
REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………….. 118
LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1: Biographical information of respondents…………………………………. 54
Table 3.2: Cross tabulation of respondents’ last town of residence before resettling home 58
Table 3.3: Cross tabulation of respondents Linguistic Repertoire……………….. 60
Table 3.4: Cross tabulation of Abiriw respondents’ language proficiency……. 62
Table 3.5: Cross tabulation of Awukugua respondents’ language proficiency.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 64
Table 3.6: Cross tabulation of Adukurom respondents’ language proficiency. 65
Table 3.7: Cross tabulation of language use at home…………………………………. 69
Table 3.8: Cross tabulation of language use in the community……………………. 71
Table 3.9: Cross tabulation of language use in church……………………………… 73
Table 3.10: Cross tabulation of language use in school…………………………….. 74
Table 3.11: Cross tabulation of language use at the market………………………… 76
Table 3.12: Cross tabulation of language use at workplace (Abiriw)………….. 77
Table 3.13: Cross tabulation of language use at the workplace (Awukugua)… 78
Table 3.14: Cross tabulation of language use at the workplace (Adukurom)…. 79
Table 3.15: Cross tabulation of language use at the hospital…………………….. 80
Table 3.16: Cross tabulation of language use with strangers……………………… 81
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: The Guan language subgroups in five regions of Ghana (Adopted from Animah 2015) 6
Figure 2: A typical triglossic structure of language use in an African country40 Figure 3: A map of Akwapim North district showing the three research communities (Adopted from Ghana Statistical service 2010)……………………………………………………………………………………….. 47
Figure 4: Triglossic structure model in the Ɔkere context…………………………… 88
CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Introduction
This thesis examines the language contact situation in three major Ɔkere speaking communities in the Eastern Region. These are Abiriw, Awukugua and Adukurom. Most importantly, the study seeks to establish the various patterns of code choices and language use in all the three communities.
This chapter provides a general introduction to the study. It discusses the linguistic phenomenon of language contact and some of the notable outcomes such as multilingualism which triggers language choice.
Background to Language Contact
Language contact is a linguistic phenomenon whereby two or more languages interact in the same domain. It is a phenomenon that is widespread due to migration, colonialism, war, and intermarriages, and it will continue to exist because individuals and societies continue to migrate because of one reason or the other.
Not only does migration result in instances of language contact; it can also cause both individual migrants and migrant societies to be marginalized due to their demographic sizes, socio-economic power and political organizations.
In the midst of this human contact, the cultures of the ‘host’ speech communities and those of the migrants come into contact with their languages as the most crucial elements due to socialization. This may result in a lot of
linguistic influences such as borrowing, simplification, linguistic interference, and others.
These influences may lead to other linguistic phenomena such as bilingualism, multilingualism, code switching and code-mixing. Bilingualism or multilingualism is the ability of an individual or members of a speech community to speak two or more languages. According to Romaine (2000:13) bilingualism or multilingualism is widespread due to language contact that has resulted in the marginalization of languages of minority groups to primary domains. These minority speech communities are then pressurized to learn languages of the dominant ethnic groups as second languages for social integration.
Focusing on the linguistic situation in Africa, Batibo (2005:16) argues that the heterogeneous nature of the continent exposes Africans to so many languages, resulting in multilingualism.
Still on multilingualism, Trudell (2009:56) provides a different twist to the meaning of the concept of multilingualism by stating that “multilingualism in Africa is a gift” this description tells how the location of Africans geographically exposes them to many languages. Linguist such as Batibo (2005) argue that it is very rare to be monolingual in Africa due to the presence of many languages. In addition, Igboanusi (2009: 300) notes that “West Africa” of which Ghana forms part “is linguistically the most heterogeneous sub-region in Africa accounting for more than half of Africa’s 2000 languages.”
Narrowing the concept of multigualism to Ghana, Dzameshie (1988:16) studies the linguistic situation in Ghana and states that there are between 45 to 60 indigenous languages in the country. According to him, some of these
languages are major languages backed by institutional support and assigned to formal public places while others are minority languages with no institutional support.
On the other hand, Dakubu (1996) cited in Adika (2012:151) states that there are 50 indigenous languages in Ghana. With regard to all the conflicting reports concerning the number of indigenous languages in Ghana, Bibiebome (2011: 25) posits that “one can safely put the number of languages in Ghana at more than 40”, a suggestion that is adopted by this study. This notwithstanding, it should be stated that the three major dialects of Akan (Akwapim Twi, Asante Twi, and Fante) are treated as separate languages in educational institutions.
Just like other multilinguals worldwide, individuals and multilingual societies in Ghana use languages available to them in diverse ways to serve their communicative needs. This procedure that allows multilinguals to choose languages from their linguistic repertoires to suit people they come into contact with, situations or a given context is known in sociolinguistics as language choice.
Language choice is an accepted norm worldwide especially in bilingual or multilingual societies because it gives individuals and societies the opportunity to make use of languages in their linguistic repertoire. Besides, just as monolinguals vary their styles in speech, multilinguals also make language choices as a way of using languages available to them to serve their communicative needs.
In Ghana, language choice is a familiar phenomenon in all speech communities. This is because of urbanization, industrialization, expansion of
education and the need for social integration present scenarios for choices to be made. In relation to these variables, individuals and speech communities make language choices that are unique and peculiar to the language ideologies of their speech communities.
Agyekum (2009:1) stresses that “though speech is free, there is a limit to the extent to which one freely uses language.” This underscores the fact that in a multilingual setting being able to make appropriate language choices is perceived as a sign of communicative competence. In support of this assertion Saville-Troike (1989:50) argues that multilinguals have no choice than to depend on language choice to utilize languages available to serve the communicative needs of the variety of people in their communities. Sridhar (1996: 51) shares the view of Saville-Troike (1989) by emphasizing that language choice is about “who uses what language with whom and for what purpose?” The explanation by Sridhar reiterates the need for members of multilingual communities to be communicatively competent enough to be able to use languages available to them effectively.
Nonetheless, Romaine (2000:51) posits that “[c]hoices made by individuals on everyday basis have an effect on the long-term situation of the languages concerned”. By this it is evident that the outcomes of one’s language choice can contribute to other linguistic phenomena such as language shift, language maintenance or even language death.
