SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE OF INTERACTION IN ABAK URBAN MARKET

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background to the Study
According to Wikipedia, a market is one of the many varieties of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services (including labor), in exchange for money from buyers. It can be said that a market is a place where prices of goods and services are established. For a market to be competitive there must be more than a single buyer or seller. It has been suggested that two people may trade, but it takes at least three persons to have a market, so that there is competition in at least one of its two sides. A market brings together people from different socio-cultural backgrounds for the purpose of business transaction. In a bid to buy and sell goods, marketers tend to communicate using a language (Odebode, 2012). There are two roles in markets, buying and selling. Markets allow any tradable item to be evaluated and priced. A market emerges more or less spontaneously or may be constructed deliberately by human interaction in order to enable the exchange of rights (of ownership) of services and goods. Markets vary in form, scale (volume and geographical reach), location, and types of participants, as well as in types of goods and services traded in. Examples include:

Physical retail markets, such as local farmers’ markets (which are usually held in town squares or parking lots on an ongoing or occasional basis).

Shopping centers.

Market restaurants.

Shopping malls.
(Non-physical) internet markets

Ad hoc auction markets.

Markets for intermediate goods used in production of other goods and services.

Labor markets.

International currency and commodity markets.

Stock markets for the exchange of shares in corporations.

Artificial markets created by regulation to exchange rights for derivatives that have been designed to ameliorate externalities, such as pollution permits, Illegal markets such as the market for illicit drugs, arms or pirated products.
In addition, another classification or types of market as stated in the Wikipedia retrieved on (22/4/2019) are depicted herein on the basis of Place, market is classified into:

Local Market or Regional Market.

National Market or Countrywide Market.

International Market or Global Market.
On the basis of Time, market is classified into:

Very Short Period Market.

Short Period Market.

Long Period Market.

Very Long Period Market.
On the basis of Competition, market is classified into:

Perfectly competitive market structure.

Imperfectly competitive market structure.
The above market structures differ widely from each other in respect of their features, price etc. Under imperfect competition, there are different forms of markets like monopoly, duopoly, oligopoly and monopolistic competition. Usually, Market means a place where buyers and sellers meet in order to carry on transactions of goods and services. Thus, the focus of the present study is the first category of market. i.e. physical market attempts to analyze the sociolinguistic issues in Abak Urban market. The study focused the social and language contact that occur during the face to face contact of buyers and sellers.

1.2 Statement of the Problem
A closer view of the languages used in markets may reveal that they are persuasive, vocative or emotive. We may as well discover that such marketing languages contain metaphoric and euphemistic expressions. Finally, we may find some of the buyers and sellers uses code switching and code mixing in the course of haggling, this is why our preoccupation in this study is to unravel and identify the sociolinguistic issues that accrue in the language of marketing in Abak urban market. Adeyanju (2002), noted that the task before a sociolinguist is to investigate and describe features of language or verbal interaction peculiar to each identified social class. Since the social situation is the most powerful determinant of verbal behaviour (Adeyanju, 2002). In a nutshell, the research sought to present a content analysis of language of interaction in the market from the perspective of sociolinguistics.
1.3 Purpose of the Study
The specific purpose of this study was to carry out a study on the sociolinguistic analysis of language of interaction in Abak Urban Market.
Specifically, the objective of the study is to:

Identify the strategies as bilingualism/multilingualism and code switching and mixing.

Also the study presents a real life example of bilingual speech manifestations providing background information about the bilingual developments of people under examination.

Investigate how sociolinguistic variables like age, gender, social class, occupation, regional grouping etc. affect their language use in the market.
1.4 Research Questions
However, the research work intends to seek answers to the following questions:

What are those factors that dictate the form of exchange in market communication?

Ascertain the orders of transactions and communications between the sellers and the buyers?

Assess the sociolinguistics aspects in the discourse among the sellers and buyers within Abak Urban market in Nigeria?
1.5 Scope and Delimitation of the Study
The geographical location of the study would be Abak Urban market in Nigeria. The choice of Abak urban market was due to its vibrant contributions to socio-economic and linguistic developments. It is also believed that data from market is useful because a market is an ideal place for different languages and their varieties to come into contact thus presenting a multilingual setting with its attendant consequences. The variables to be investigated in the study include the sociolinguistic factors of gender, nationality, ethnicity, geographical origins and social class.