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CODE MIXING AS A SOCIOLINGUISTIC MEDIUM IN SOME SELECTED SONGS IN THE NIGERIAN MUSIC INDUSTRY

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1    BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Society impinges on language, and language impinges on the society. Hence, there must be a relationship existing between language and society. The interdependency of these two entities – language and society led to the study of sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics is the study of all aspects of linguistics applied towards the connections between language and society, and the way we use it in different language situations.

Language is seen as a unifying force and a common ground among various people through which effective communication is carried out. It has however been noticed that even within the same language, there are different ways or styles of speaking. The contact English language had with Nigeria and her indigenous languages and a bid to communicate effectively across and within ethnic boundaries (cases of intra and inter ethnic communication), led to code mixing.

1.2   STATEMENT OF THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

The multilingual nature of the country and some individuals’ multilingual or bilingual competence and the inter-language relationship existing between English language and over four hundred indigenous languages in Nigeria have led to code-mixing in conversation, discourse and communicative competence. These lead to the following questions;

1.  Is there any limit(s) or constraint(s) to code-mixing?

2.  Is code-mixing really necessary in discourse?

3.  What informs code-mixing?

1.3   AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

This research is informed by questions arising from code-mixing in the lyrics of songs in the Nigerian music industry. This research focuses on some songs in which Yoruba language predominates in the Pidginize English medium used. This research attempts at discovering why the artistes code mix in their songs. This study will examine the various reasons and motivations for code-mixing. This study will look at how the artistes have arrive at a communicative end via code-mixing and examines the success or otherwise of this trend.

1.4     DELIMITATION AND LIMITATION

Due to the researcher’s level of proficiency, knowledge and understanding of the English, Yoruba and Pidgin languages, the researcher will cover some selected songs in the Nigerian music industry in which these languages are used. To achieve the success of this research work, the work is limited to code-mixing.

1.5     JUSTIFICATION

This is regarded as an addition to the existing stock of researches on the subject of code-mixing. However, to the knowledge of the researcher, no work has done a study of code-mixing as a sociolinguistic medium in the Nigerian music industry. This study aims at tackling code-mixing as used in the lyrics of songs of some artistes in the Nigerian music industry. This study will therefore be useful to students of sociolinguistics generally.

1.6      METHODOLOGY

Ten songs will be chosen randomly from the lists of songs in the Nigerian music industry and these songs will be analyzed alongside the reasons and motivations for code-mixing.