SYPNOSIS ON ACHIEVING BILINGUALISM IN CROSS CULTURAL MARRIAGES
IN NIGERIA: CHALLENGES AND CONSEQUENCES
Ensuring continuity in the intergenerational transmission of language is a crucial element in the
process of its maintenance (Fishman, 1991). The family has been identified as the main factor in
ensuring transmission thus raising questions about language choice which usually ignites
emotional reactions especially in cross-cultural marriages. Cross cultural marriage has
considerable effect on the linguistic consequences on children and adolescents.
This study explores the language dynamics, attitudes and usage patters within cross cultural
marriages in Nigeria. This study will be rooted in Hyme’s (1962) theory of ethnography of
speaking which is concerned with the linguistic resources people use in context and the socially
situated uses and meaning of language, what language to use in what place, to whom and upon
what occasion etc and Giles’ (1979( socio-psychological theory of accommodation which seeks to
explain cognitive adjustments in the choice of language adopted by children.
Bilingualism in its most comprehensive and accurate form was defined by Theiry (1978) which is
cited by Grosjean (1982:146): “a true bilingual is someone who is taken to be one of themselves
by the members of two linguistic communities, at roughly the same social and cultural roots”. The
most successful cases of such bilingualism are often the products of cross-cultural marriages in
which the children are exposed to two languages from birth.
Early research on marriage partners show that people tend to choose those who are similar to
themselves in cultural background, attractiveness and economic status (Thibaut & Kelly, 1959;
Bernstein, 1971, cited in Lyon, 1966:184). In choosing not to do so, partners need a strength of
commitment, and a conscious readiness to resist social pressures. Several things will have to be
negotiated, and language is prime among them. In such marriages, bilingualism generally arises as
a result of deliberate and conscious strategy devised by the parents in order to ensure that both
languages get established in the home, usually for sociological and educational reasons.
There are basically two approaches taken by parents in order to achieve bilingualism in cross-
cultural families; these are: strategies of dichotomy (or fixed choices), and strategies of free
alternation. Dichotomy is very commonly used with each parent consistently using only his/her
language to the child: the one-person one-language approach. It was the French linguist Grammont
who, at the turn of the century, formally proposed such a strategy, and called it the “une personne,
une langue” principle (Grosjean, 1982:173)
This study aims to discover the motivation for achieving bilingualism in cross cultural marriages
in Nigeria, present the challenges and the consequences of such challenges. The study will look
out for the effect of such marriages on the children raised by cross-cultural marriages, implications
for language shift and maintenance in Nigeria.
REFERENCES
Fishman, J. A. (1991). Reversing Language Shift: Theory and Practice of Assistance to Threatened
Languages. Retrieved on 23rd November 2019 from http://www.youtube.com
Giles, Howard & Philip, Smith (1979). Accommodation Theory: Optimal Levels of Convergence.
In Howard Gills and Robert St. Clair (Ed.), Language and Social Psychology (pp
45-65). Oxford: Blackwell.
Grosjean, F. (1982) Life with Two Languages. Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press.
Hymes, Dell (1962). The Ethnography of Speaking. In Thomas Gladwin and W. C. Sturtevant
(Eds.), Anthropology and Human Behaviour (pp. 13-53.). Washington, Anthropological
Society of Washington.
Lyon, J. (1996) Becoming Bilingual. Multilingual Matters: Clevedon
