Igbo and Hausa Encounters in Multicultural Abuja City: Contact and

Igbo and Hausa Encounters in Multicultural Abuja City: Contact and Conviviality

Authors: Ugwuona Crescentia (University of Nigeria, Nsukka)
Speaker: Ugwuona Crescentia
Topic: Language in Real and Virtual Spaces
The GLOCAL AFALA 2023 Poster

Abstract

Currently, Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria and sites of heightened linguistic and cultural diversity has witnessed migrants from different cultures especially from Igbo tribe, and the evidencing different degrees of complex networks of interaction and conceals of realities of underlying tribalism attitudes of a type not previously experienced and explored. There is also lack of proper analysis of how these Igbo migrants and the Hausa societies they reside in, interact, and the interface between their social relations and language practices. Beyond that, further inquiries reveal that none of the studies on multilingualism, migrations, multicultural and population mobility elsewhere went on to explore the ethics of social cohesion in local conviviality and small talk. This study therefore investigates the communicative practices that figure in the interactional moments across lines of differences among Igbo migrants and the Hausa societies they are in contact with in Abuja city. In doing this, it aims also to understand how Igbo and Hausa people do togetherness while in Abuja, and the impacts on social cohesion, peaceful coexistence and developments in the area. The paper concludes with a general discussion on the implications of conviviality for politics of multilingualism and language policy. Some aspects of interactional sociolinguistics and conviviality relations are utilised as the theoretical framework. Data through participant observation, semi-unstructured interviews, audio-video recordings of individuals’/group repertoires in canteens, restaurants, sports and video arenas, are to be analysed through Goebel’s (2015) reproduction of convivial relations and small talk (ROCRT). The study will contribute to the global debates on the art and practice of living together and having dialogue with each other for promoting positive change.

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Keywords: Abuja Nigeria, conviviality, Igbo and Hausa, multicultural, Nigeria