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Using the mixed method research approach, this study investigated the linguistic landscape of the central business district of Accra, Ghana. The study employed both the Ethnolinguistic Vitality Theory (EV) and the Place Semiotics Theory to explore the types of signage displayed by shop owners in the Makola market, the languages used on these signs, the dominant language(s) on the signs and how the use of language reflects the ethnolinguistic vitality of the local languages used in Accra. The findings present a very busy linguistic landscape where shop owners use the names of their companies and the products they sell as a marketing strategy through a variety of modes including signboards, billboards, taglines, and signposts to attract customers. There was also a preponderance of English in the linguistic landscape of Accra, which establishes English as a powerful tool for inter-ethnic communication and national integration, giving an implicit impression of low vitality of indigenous languages in the space.

Free speech and media freedoms were reinforced in Ghana with the repeal of the Criminal Libel Law in 2001. As a result, the citizen’s voice, which was hitherto muted, has grown louder as Ghanaians feel emboldened to contribute to national discourse in the media (especially local language radio programmes) without fear of the Criminal Libel Law. However, concerns have been raised about indecent language which has become pervasive in the Ghanaian media. This study examined indecent language on radio in Ghana. The study adopted the quantitative approach and analysed content data gathered from selected Ghanaian radio stations from May, 2016 to September, 2016. This was the period just before the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana. The study revealed six types of indecent language on Ghanaian radio and noted that insults and offensive comments ranked the highest, while expressions promoting divisiveness ranked lowest.

This paper examines the determinant factors motivating language choice in churches in coastal Accra, an area characterized by a high degree of urbanization and multilingualism. As this region is also ethnically Gã, we survey the attitudes of Gã congregants to the use of other languages in their churches, bearing in mind the pressure faced by Gã from the more dominant vehicular languages, Akan and English. Data was obtained via participant observation, questionnaires and interviews. Using domain analysis, we show that language choice in the church domain is guided by the diametric principles of inclusiveness and church expansion on the one hand, and the conservation of a homogeneous socio-cultural identity on the other. Multilingual churches espouse the former while monolingual churches prize the latter. Gã congregants in churches that make extensive use of Akan and English report feeling satisfied with the language choices in their churches as they see these lingua francas as necessary for reaching out to the wider community. Although in other spheres of life there is irritation among Gã natives about the diminishing role of their language, in the church domain, this is readily tolerated for the greater good of advancing the church’s work.

Lexical expansion may be triggered by different factors. A recent case of protracted intermittent power outages in Ghana gave rise to dumsor, an Akan word which means 'turn off' and 'turn on'. This word spawned many neologisms, some of which became part of the political discourse in Ghana at the time. However, very few of the neologisms are actually in use because the situation that gave rise to them no longer exists and the formation of most of them was purely jocular. Based on data collected from Facebook posts and status updates, this paper discusses what is called the dumsor lexicon and the morphological and sociolinguistic motivations for the formation of the dumsor-based neologisms. First, we observe that the motivation for the linguistic behaviour that spawns such neologisms is consistent with the lightheartedness of Ghanaians. We show that the neologisms fall into various semantic classes and that the morphological processes of compounding and affixation are employed predominantly but dumsor itself is partially anglicized and the affixes employed in the derivation of the neologisms are of English origin, because Akan, from which dumsor emanates, lacks equivalent affixes. Additionally, we observe that the use of English affixes could be because the originators of the neologisms either did not know alternative processes in Akan that could yield the same result or possibly did not find them useful because of the multilingual setting of the platform. Thus, we argue that the morphology of the neologisms and the range of items and concept they refer to betray the possible social backgrounds of the originators of the words and the multilingual setting of the linguistic behaviour.

Africa is a highly multilingual continent; the languages are diverse and numerous. Even though Maho (2004) suggests that there are 1441 languages in Africa, Simons and Fennig (2018) have a much hig...

In this paper, we investigate the choice of English as a home language in Ghana, a multilingual nation where 81 languages are spoken by a population of about 27 million people. In the past, while E...

This study aims at showing the impoliteness strategies employed during some radio interactions. The data used here are mainly recordings of the morning shows of some private radio stations in Ghana. We establish that all the recorded utterances have some features that correspond with at least one of Culpeper’s (1996, 2005) impoliteness strategies, which are bald on record impoliteness, positive impoliteness, negative impoliteness, off-record impoliteness and withhold politeness. However, many of the participants prefer the use of the on-record strategies to the off-record strategies of impoliteness. We therefore assert that many participants in interactive radio programmes in Ghana prefer to convey messages to their addressees in a more direct and unrestrained manner, with little or no attention to their (addressees’) face needs. These participants attack the faces of more powerful people not only to demean their social status but also to demand quicker results and gain some psychological relief.

In this paper, we explore the language-migration nexus among female migrants, Kayayei, in three urban markets in Accra, Ghana. We assume in this paper that first time migrants from northern Ghana will face lin-guistic challenges in these markets because the linguistic situation in ur-ban centres in Ghana is very diverse and complex. Typically, first time migrants from northern Ghana may hardly speak the major languages that are spoken in Accra: Ga, Akan, Ewe and English. Nevertheless, they have to learn to negotiate fees with the clients (whose luggage they carry) as well as tax officers who chase them all over the market to collect the daily income taxes from them. How do the migrants cope in such com-plex linguistic situation of the host community? What strategies do these migrants resort to in coping with the linguistic challenges they face in their new (host) communities? We investigate the linguistic challenges that migrants face in their new environment, and identify the coping strategies the migrants employ to meet these linguistics challenges. We first identify the dominant language(s) of the markets to see if it is/they are indeed different from the languages spoken by the migrants. We then examine the language (s) migrants select for business transactions in these markets. Finally, we attempt to evaluate the level of competence the migrants have in the selected language for business and explore why migrants choose to do business in the particular language (s) irrespective of their level of competence in the selected language. Our investigation revealed Akan as the dominant language of all three markets. It also re-vealed that very minimum linguistic exchange is required in the line of business of the Kayayei. This implies that very little linguistic knowledge in the market language may be sufficient to conduct business in their line of business. Incipient bilingualism, learning the appropriate registers (key vocabulary) needed to transact business in the markets, emerged as the most employed coping strategy among the migrants.

Research findings have shown that the media construct politics in stereotypically masculine terms ( Kahn, 1996 , Gidengil and Everitt, 2000 , Lithgow, 2000 , Everitt, 2005 ). That is, the language used by the media to report the activities of female political leaders tends to suggest that they are ‘trespassing’ on the traditionally ‘masculine’ world of politics. Some studies, however, have claimed that instances of biases and negative representation of female candidates have declined significantly in the media (especially newspapers with larger readerships) because of more professional reporting and sensitivity about gender biases ( Kahn, 1996 , Smith, 1997 ). The objective of this study is to investigate the validity of such claims. We do so by examining the media representation of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first female president of an independent African state. We compare the African media and the international media reports on Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and her major rival George Oppon Weah. The paper seeks to establish whether there are any differences in the representation of these two candidates. It also considers whether there are any differences between the way the international media and the African media present the two candidates.

Language shift, a process which may lead speakers to use their language in fewer domains with respect to other languages or even lose proficiency in their language altogether in favour of other languages, is a prominent concept in linguistics. But the concept has been mainly studied from Western perspectives (e.g. Fishman 1964, 1991; and Veltman 1983). This paper discusses language shift from the perspectives of Ghana, a highly multilingual developing nation in West Africa. We introduce the concept of ecology of language shift, and argue that any theory of language shift must rigorously take into consideration the complexity of the ecology in which language shift occurs. Multilingual language shift processes – situations in which different types of language shift are taking place concurrently or sequentially in a country – are thus very different from simple language shift situations in less multilingual set-ups. The paper provides a relatively detailed empirical study of language shift based on a questionnaire survey before outlining some language maintenance activities – such as the pervasive use of indigenous Ghanaian languages in FM radio broadcast - that are being pursued to contain language shift in Ghana, and which may be used for containing language shift in other African countries.