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A Sociolinguistic Anaysis Of Code Switching And Code Mixing In Selected Jenifa’s Diary Episodes
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However, Jenifa’s Diary is a Nigerian television comedy series, created
by Funke Akindele. The series is part of the Jenifa franchise, based on a
naive and funny character of the same name. Jenifa’s Dairy has over 11
(possibly going to 13) seasons and is currently active and ongoing
(Ikeke, Nkem, 2017). This series tells a story of a native village girl
who desperately wants to get out of her ratchet way of life. In her
desperation she leaves her village and goes to the city of Lagos in
order to process her visa to travel to the United States. Although
unsuccessful with her visa application she decides to stay in Lagos and
live a better life. She then finds herself in University of Lagos, with
the help of a lady she met, Toyo baby (Olayode Juliana) and Kiki (Lota
Chukwu) who help and accommodate her (Izuzu Chidumga, 2017).
Jenifa
is unsuccessful with her education but she gets a job at Nikki’o salon
on the Island with the help of her friend kiki and she becomes very
successful in her hair styling career. At Nikki’o saloon she meets
another stylist, Segun (Folarin ‘Falz’ Falana) who becomes interested in
her but she at first rejects him, but later accepts his proposal after
he goes to America and they both get engaged (Ikeke, Nkem, 2017). All
over the country, people always in anticipation of the next episode on
the series, the excitement almost grew to a feverish pitch. Even old men
and women were hardened fans. But that ain’t the most amazing part. The
most amazing part is how young people all over the country, especially
the females, have resorted to speaking like Jenifa, the series’ main
character, who’s major selling point was her corrupted form of English
(Anozie, 2017).
On the other hand, by virtue of communicative
configuration, imitated speech can be used. It should be stressed that
Jenifa’s Diary allows for a dramatized discourse; it can create,
correlate, and contrast different speakers. By so doing, it imitates
real life scenarios of the deployments of different languages in a
typical oral discourse among Nigerians.
But on a lighter yet more
serious note, this trend might not be bad, but it definitely ain’t
productive. And why do something unproductive when the time could be
better spent doing the opposite. And for those arguing that English is
not our mother tongue, it might not be our mother tongue, but it is
still the official language. And it is still a compulsory subject in
o’level and all other sorts of exams (Anozie, 2017). It is on this note
that this study intends to find out what motivated code switching and
code mixing in some of the characters in Jenifa’s Diary Episodes, and it
also intends to find out why.
1.2 Statement of the problem
A
few studies have been carried out on bilingual speakers of English.
Some of the studies focus on the way speakers of English code switch and
mix between different language codes in their daily dialogues or
conversations. All these studies drew their data from real life
contexts. None of them investigated the use of code switch and mix in
dramatized utterances. Investigating code switch and code mixing in
Jenifa’s Diary Episodes will assist us in identifying how these
phenomena are used among Nigerians. This is the gap this study intends
to fill.
1.3 Aims and objectives
1.5 Significance of the study
The
research will x-ray the possible social relevance of code switching and
code mixing in TV soap opera in a multilingual Nigeria. The results of
the study will assist in creating a better understanding of the code
switching and mixing phenomenon amongst Nigerian bilinguals. Finally, it
is hoped that this study will serves as a reference material for
further research in this area.
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