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ABSTRACT
This work is a sociolinguistic investigation of language use in a market setting. In this investigation the New Benin market setting served as our reference point while the meat sellers and buyers as our case study. The aim of this study is to examine the nature of language by meat sellers and buyers in a multilingual market setting such as the New Benin market. Also the research is focused on how language is used in achieving the daily communication goals of the meat sellers and buyers. Data analyzed in this research were collected through direct observation and recording of real situation of interaction between the New Benin meat sellers and buyers. In the analysis of language samples collected for this research, the researcher employed the discourse analysis theoretical framework. Using this framework, language samples collected were analyzed in the form of extracts hence they are numbered as discourse one to eight.
The findings of this research includes that the New Benin market is made up of sellers and buyers from diverse linguistic backgrounds. The implication of this is that a language to be used is such that cuts across all diverse indigenous languages present in the market hence the Nigerian pidgin becomes the optimal communication code. However this research also discovered that though the Nigerian pidgin is given great communication function among the meat buyers and sellers, other indigenous languages are also used in the process of buying and selling. These languages (Nigerian pidgin and indigenous languages) are used simultaneously among meat sellers and buyers who share same linguistic background, thus code mixing/switching is a common phenomenon among New Benin market meat sellers and buyers.
