The Ukwuani language/dialect question: Linguistic and socio-political perspectives

Abstract

One of the challenges facing Nigeria today as a multilingual nation is language-dialect classification controversy. The controversy is encouraged by the application of both political and linguistic criteria in the classification of linguistic varieties with none dominating the other. Many Nigerian languages today are endangered as a result of non-identification or wrong classification. Ukwuani is a linguistic variety spoken, mainly, by people of Ukwuani Local Government Area of Delta State, south-south Nigeria. While some scholars like Blench and Dendo (2004: v) classify Ukwuani as a language of Igboid group, others like Nwaozuzu (2008: 12) classify Ukwuani as a dialect of Igbo. Moreover, a debate on the true classification of Ukwuani has been interestingly going-on on Nairaland Forum for a couple of years now. In view of the above controversies on the true position of Ukwuani, and bearing in mind the linguistic, socio-economic and political implications of getting it right in the placement of a linguistic variety, especially as one of the antidotes to language endangerment, this paper tries to ascertain the true position of Ukwuani using every linguistic and socio-cultural criterion for language and dialect classification to test the supposed true identity of Ukwuani. It is discovered that Ukwuani is a language with its own peculiarities; not a dialect.