The New Language Policy of the Nigerian Army: National Integration or Linguistic Imperialism?

Abstract

I argue in this paper that the new language policy of the Nigerian Army recognizes and promotes the dominant languages as resources for military training, intelligence gathering and peace building, while the dominated languages are marginalized, alienated and relegated, thus the policy infringes on the fundamental linguistic rights of speakers of minoritized languages in the army. I further maintain that the Nigerian Army’s exclusive language policy is harmful to the army as a national institution and call for explicit status planning of the Nigerian Pidgin to serve as the language of wider communication in the army in response to its emerging sociolinguistic challenges.

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