Nigerian English In Political Telemarketing

Abstract

Societal multilingualism helps Nigeria to retain English, an exoglossic language, as her lingua franca. English performs both instrumental and integrative functions in Nigeria. The use of English as a language of political campaigns exemplifies one of the important functions given the country's level of economic development and slow-evolving, military-authored democracy. The paper examines the exploitation of English in television advertising in Nigeria. It is done as a follow-up to an earlier work on the use of English in political ads in the print media. The present paper examines English, within a context of media multilingualism, in the marketing (advertisement) of political programmes in the recent Abacha democratic experiment in Nigeria.