![]() The idea that language discrimination is a proxy for racial discrimination of people was underscored as long ago as the 1970s. Describing the phenomenon of “accent discrimination,” she writes, “such behavior is so commonly accepted, so widely perceived as appropriate, that it must be seen as the last back door to discrimination” (Lippi-Green, 1997, p. Lippi-Green (1997) describes the process in her model of linguistic subordination, which deconstructs how standard language ideologies perpetuate the (mis)recog-nition that non-mainstream ways of speaking are less valuable by virtue of their linguistic differences. ![]() Instead, language discrimination is the result of the continued marginalization of people because of their ethnicity, gender, region, and class (Paris, 2012 Lippi-Green, 1997 Smitherman, 1973). This raciolinguistic argument is not entirely new however, as other scholars have long shown how the root cause of language discrimination is not due to a misunderstanding of how language works. ![]() Since the project of modernity is premised on the stigmatization of racialized subjects across nation-state and colonial contexts, efforts to legitimize racially stigmatized linguistic practices are fundamentally limited in their capacity to unsettle the inequities that they seek to disrupt. However, as Rosa and Flores point out, efforts by linguists to demonstrate the systematic nature of language variation has not led to widespread understanding of or greatly reduced discrimination toward languages like AAE: Through showing people that these language varieties have their own grammatical systems, these efforts align with the principles of linguistics, which treat all languages equally while also recognizing that societies often judge speakers of certain languages from a deficit perspective that are ultimately grounded in racism, sexism, and classism. Most of this work aims to educate people about the systematic and rule-governed nature of language variation. Notable work has also been done that addresses language discrimination towards regional varieties of English, such as Appalachian English (Hazen & Butcher, 2011) and Southern varieties of English (Charity Hudley & Mallinson, 2015 Reaser et al., 2011). Much of this work has taken place in connection to encouraging a deeper understanding of social varieties around which many myths and misconceptions circulate, such as African American English (e.g., Baugh, 2001 Wolfram et al., 2008). Consequently, the author recommends that pidgin should be approved as a national language in Nigeria, and incorporated into the Nigerian school curriculum to be used as another means of communication, taught in schools so as to improve learners’ knowledge exposing them to the distinctive peculiarities existing between the English and the Pidgin language respectively.PROMOTING PIDGIN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOAĪ number of scholars working in linguistics and related programs at universities in the United States have developed language and dialect awareness programs to educate university communities, and oftentimes, the general public, about linguistic difference. ![]() It also examines the impact of the recognition of Pidgin as well as the functions of Pidgin in a multilingual nation, as Nigeria. It is on this note, that the author examines the role of Pidgin language in the achievement of national unity, peace and security in Nigerian. Sadly though, Pidgin continues to suffer outright neglect, absolute disregard, viewed as a jargon or “auxiliary situational language, broken, basterdized tongues, haphazard Inferior, and consequently, not accepted as a standard means of communication. The inborn tendency to claim that one’s tribe and tongue is better than others continues to cause disunity, absence of peace and security. Over the years it has been very challenging for Nigerians to cohabit in peace and unity because of the multiplicity of language. Pidgin language in Nigeria is an important language that has achieved wide recognition and has become a language of contact among people from different groups and languages. ![]()
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