Language Maintenance in the Face of Identity Shift €“ Some Insights from Ilorin, Nigeria

Abstract

This paper investigated the influence of politics on the linguistic and ethnicidentities of some Ilorin people of Yoruba ancestry and showed the variationsthat exist in individuals ' degrees of allegiances to that ancestry. It paidparticular attention to ethnic converts; individuals who have crossed ethnicboundaries while at the same time, maintaining linguistic allegiance to theirancestral ethnicity. Survey and ethnographic methods were used. Proportionalsampling method was used for the selection of 100 questionnaire respondentsfrom the three local government areas constituting Ilorin. Structuredinterviews which were conducted with 15 purposively selected respondentswith sufficient knowledge of their identities and community wereethnographically analysed. A uniform pattern of linguistic identity wasestablished in favour of the Yoruba language but not so for the Yoruba ethnicidentity. A mosaic pattern of identity was established as 53.3% whichconstitutes eight of the fifteen respondents, preferred a civic identity; 26.7% ofthe respondents preferred their sole ancestral ethnic identity; Yoruba; tworespondents which constituted 13.3% of the respondents preferred hybridethnic identities; Yoruba-Ilorin while there was also the case of an ethnicconverts who claimed non-ancestral ethnic belongingness (6.7%). Heritagelanguage maintenance did not translate into the maintenance of ancestralethnicity for a number of respondents as political allegiance was central totheir ethnic claims. Non-allegiance to an ancestry whose language is dominantin Ilorin demonstrates that humans are not at the mercy of their heritagelanguages even when such languages are the dominant medium of expressionfor their community.Key words: heritage language, ethnic identity, allegiance, belongingness