A Sociolinguistic Study of Minority Language Development of Selected Cross-Lingual Households in Jos, Nigeria

The study of the effects of multilingualism has continued to generate scholarly interest in contemporary research. Language endangerment appears to be the most unfavourable of all the known effects of multilingualism. In this paper, effort is made to describe the language situation in selected cross-lingual households within Jos, the capital of Plateau State, North-Central Nigeria with a view to ascertaining the degree of vitality of the minority indigenous languages which have hitherto faced threats, in varying degrees, from English. The majority of the data were obtained via questionnaires and structured interviews, and analyzed within the purview of an eclectic theoretical framework: the Intergenerational Transfer Theory, Comprehensible Input Theory and the theory of Habit Formation (principles of automaticity). The study’s principal finding is that cross-lingual contexts are not a conducive environment for minority language growth and preservation in that the dominant language, English, keeps submerging the minority ones in terms of constant usage, no thanks to the parents who take solace in identifying with English, and forcing their children to do same, due to its prestigious status as well as the myriads of economic benefits it offers. Based on this finding, the study concludes that cross-lingual households are language endangering contexts, particularly for minority languages of Nigerian provenance. In a bid to stem the tide, it is therefore recommended that the minority languages be allowed to co-habit with English even while the latter continues to dominate the cross-lingual household domain in Nigeria, after all it has come to stay in the country’s sociolinguistic space