LANGUAGE VARIATION AND IDENTITY: A CASE STUDY OF LEXICAL VARIATION IN YORUBA

ABSTRACT
Language does not exist in isolation. A language is situated where its Speaker are found hence it is expected that the society where a language is Spoken bears influence on the language. The society creates a class where People fall into hence these classes represent the social identity of individuals in a society. Those varying identity can be age, educational qualification, gender etc. However, this study examines how social identity affects language and precisely one’s choice of word.
The data for this work is collected from different Yoruba native
speakers of different social classes, hence the analysis of the data reveal the consistency with the choice of words of individuals belonging to same social class. The work further reveals that since one’s identity can change with time, one choice of words can receive a proportionate variation