Standardization of Nigerian Pidgin in social media

Abstract

Nigerian Pidgin has come a long way since its inception through European trade contact to this period. It has evolved in vocabulary and spellings over the years. This paper examines the standardization of Nigerian Pidgin in social media to determine if the same codification system is generally used in social media. A descriptive research design method was used for the study. Data was gotten from three blogs that use Nigerian Pidgin to ascertain if Nigerian Pidgin is standardized on social media. The findings show that Nigerian Pidgin is not yet standardized despite linguists’ efforts to standardize it. Also, findings show that negative attitude towards Nigerian Pidgin is its most powerful setback. It is therefore suggested that government should institute a language planning agency for corpus and status planning for the standardization of Nigerian Pidgin since it is the only indigenous language in Nigeria that is used all over the country as a lingua franca.