THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE USE IN MOTOR PARK

Udofot (1998) defines language as a tool with which people from the same and related community interact and express their thoughts and feelings to one another. Similarly, Lyons (1970:326) defines a speech community as people who use a given language (or dialect) and need not have any social or cultural unity. It is based on this that a motor park qualifies as a speech community. The crux of this paper is to analyze language use in Keffi Motor Park using some socio-linguistics concepts and how it affects the language use of the surrounding environments. The Motor Park is a multilingual speech community because people of different backgrounds patronize it. This same people tend to use English differently such that sometimes it reflects mother tongue interference or class status distinction. Other indigenous languages like Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, Mada, Gwandara, Eggon, e.t.c. coexist with English language. The observation and eaves dropping technique was used in gathering data from the motor park. The data proved that English language has an upper hand in the Keffi motor park which also functions as the country's lingua franca. Even if any indigenous language is to be spoken the speakers tend to use English language along with it by borrowing and code mixing.