1Ogai, Joseph O. PhD.and2Williams-Umeaba, Chidi Ifeyinwa
1&2Department of Mass Communication, Federal Polytechnic, Oko, Anambra state, Nigeria
Corresponding Author’s email: williamsumeaba16@gmail.com.
Abstract
Long before the coming of Europeans to Africa, the indigenous people and nation states had developed sophisticated languages and cultural practices that held traditional societies together. There were indigenous languagesand prosperous socio-cultural economic and political systems that gave rise to known foremost human civilizations. Colonialism and imperial relationships imposed foreign languages on the people of the conquered colonial territories. These new European and Arabic languages were erroneously touted as elitist and superior to the indigenous ones. Languages such as Latin, French, Dutch, English and Arabic were taught in schools and used as languages of trade, politics, and proselytization of new religion, new knowledge and subtle tool for imposition of alien culture. It is known that language is the vehicle through which human communication takes place and that without it, it will be impossible for communication messages, ideas and values to spread from one place to another. Recently, development communication emerged as brand new communication strategy which directs communication messages straight to the people concerned in order to achieve development and improve the lives of the people. This paper seeks to interrogate the continued reliance on foreign languages in conveying communication messages in African societies. It also seeks to re-examine the nature and structure of indigenous Africanlanguages in the context of development communication. In order to arrive at valid conclusion, the research adopted the communication accommodation theory as their theoretical framework. Also, the research method of ethnography and narration were used as the qualitative research approach for the study.
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