This article provides a descriptive analysis of the entire system of address forms in Yoruba, a Defoid language of the Niger-Congo phylum, spoken principally in the western part of Nigeria and to a lesser extent in the Republics of Benin and Togo. With data from short radio and TV plays, unobtrusive observation of actual usage, and introspection, it was discovered that the choices made by interlocutors are guided by the perceived social relationship that exists between them. The principal indices of this among the Yoruba are age, social status, and kinship. Nevertheless, certain peculiarities are noticeable. For instance, the dichotomy of power vs. solidarity (Brown & Gilman 1960) becomes blurred with respect to Yoruba kinship terms of address; thus solidarity does not necessarily imply equality among the Yoruba. (Politeness, address, kinship, Africa, Yoruba)

This article examines the patterns of interaction between the Yoruba and Akoko languages. The following three major aspects of societal bilingualism engaged our attention: language ability, language use/choice in a number of domains, and language attitudes. Data on these issues were collected from 1,187 respondents with a multidimensional questionnaire and participant observation. Findings reveal that Akoko speakers are more proficient in Yoruba than in various Akoko languages. Similarly, there seems to be a positive correlation between age, level of education, type of employment, and ability in Yoruba. Language-use data suggest that the process of language shift has started, as language use at home and in the neighborhood domains is tilted in favor of Yoruba. As for language attitudes, a split commitment is discovered in that Yoruba is seen as a symbol of larger ethnic identity, whereas the Akoko languages are positively regarded as vital links with ancestors. The article underscores the need for collaborative e¤orts between communities, linguists, and government to salvage the languages from eventual death.

Thispaper explores Nupe-Yomba bilingualism and its concomitants in the Nupe settlement in Ibadan. Significantly, it was discovered that prqficiency in Yoruba is negatively correlated with age in the sense that the adolescents tend to be more bilingual in Yoruba and Nupe than their adult counterparts. Furthermore, the language-use pattern here presents a case of language maintenance, in that Nupe is dominant in the home domain whereas Yoruba is employed elsewhere, and this is not restricted to a particular age group. Finally, in terms of attitudes, there is a kind of split commitment to both Nupe and Yoruba in that Nupe is sentimentally preferred, but preference for Yoruba can be said to be instrumentally motivated.

This paper concisely reinvestigates translatorial action and observes that the ‘meaning’ of lexical items is not the same with the ‘sense’ of lexical items. The central distinctions between the two terms are that the meaning of lexical items is not only a subjective application, but is also dependent on its environment for its truth-value within any given linguistic discourse. The sense of a word however, refers to its objective use and is context independent. Meaning is viewed as having a direct link with the communicative approach to translation. The approach derives from the Communication Theory, which core assumption is that unpredictability is equivalent to informativity. Unpredictability can be unravelled by building in redundancy into the target text to avoid communication overload.<p>Through a rigorous theoretical explications coupled with an avalanche of exemplifications, it is observed that communicatively generated texts appear smoother and more comprehensible than its semantic counter part. However, the writers, suggest that the communicative approach to translation is necessarily applicable in cases of use variations occasioned by differential discourse practice between the source and the target language socio-cultures. Sequel to that, use variations between languages and socio-cultures in contact often pose linguistic structures that resist semantic rendition, because it fails to recapture the ideational content of the source language text in such instances. It is the failure of the semantic approach to yield adequate text(s) at the target end that necessitates the communicative type.<p>

Empirical studies of bilingualism in the advanced countries have been carried out to shed light on issues of both theoretical and pragmatic importance. Such issues include bilingualism and ethnic identity, educational and socio-psychological problems faced by linguistic minorities in linguistically heterogeneous countries, etc. In a multilingual country like Nigeria where there is a crosscurrent of contacts between different types of languages, giving rise to individual and community bilingualism, works of this nature are very crucial for language policies and implementation. In this paper, I deal with one of the many questions that scholars have attempted to answer, namely, does bilingualism in itself have an impact upon ethnic identity and ethnic attitudes? With data from the Saare/Tsaragi composite community, I try to show the sense in which bilingualism may not necessarily neutralise ethnic loyalty. One is led to conclude that it is the socio-cultural, economic, political and demographic context of a place -and not bilingualism per se -that is largely responsible for the behaviour patterns exhibited by bilinguals.