CHAPTER
TWO
REVIEW
OF RELATED LITERATURE
2.1 Introduction
In this chapter,
related works in the literature as this research work is concerned will be
reviewed. This will serve as bases for the whole study i.e. some aspects to be
reviewed here will be used in analysing our data in chapter three.
Due to the fact that
sociolinguistics is a wide field, mother tongue interference and some other
related sociolinguistic aspects (including language acquisition, bilingualism
and some others) have been selected for the review.
2.2 Conceptual
Framework
Bilingualism and
multilingualism are features of sociolinguistics.
According to Coates (1993), Sociolinguistics has
been defined as the study of language in its social context. The study of
language in its social context means crucially the study of linguistic
variation. Coates (1993) also identified two types of variations which are:
stylistics variation and social variation.
Mackey (1968:) in
Romaine (1989) opines: The study of bilingualism could therefore be said to
fall within the field of sociolinguistics in so far as the later is a
discipline which is concerned with the ways in which language is used in the
society. Grosjean (1982) estimated that
about half the world’s population is bilingual and that bilingualism is present
in practically every country of the world. It is very rare to see a country
with just a language, even a language has varieties.
McGregor (2009) opines that many speech communities
around the world are constituted of individuals who speak two or more shared
languages. The term bilingualism is
refered to such situations allowing that more than two languages may be
involved: sometimes the term multilingualism is used instead as the cover term.
From all the scholars that been quoted above, it is deducible that bilingualism
is a situation whereby more than a language is present in a society and
multilingualism in its case is referred to as a situation whereby more than two
languages are used side by side in a geographical environment.
2.3 Review of Related Literature
Nigeria is a
multilingual state with (521) five hundred and twenty one indigenous languages.
(Nine of these indigenous languages are dead while we have two languages
(French and English) which have no native speakers. However, we have (510) five
hundred and ten living languages apart from the dead and the ones whose
orthography have not been designed as well as French and English) (Ethnologue;
world languages; 2009). With English language co-existing with these languages
in a number of situations, in other words, English language (a former colonial
language) is being used to transact in the Nigeria society alongside the
indigenous languages.
Norbert,
(2002), observes that the influence of mother tongue affects learning of
another language. Most learners experience problems associated with their
mother tongue in learning of second language. Studies by Medubi, (2007),
Onike, (2009) and Romaine, (2011) point out that first language is a
persistent problem in our schools.
According
to Romaine, (2011), the situation is worsened by lack of instructional
materials for teaching including textbooks. Given that learners’ experience
basic problems in second language acquisition a lot needs to be done to
overcome such problems (Danuta, 2010).
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