This attitude arises partly out of the importance given to
this pidgin by the Azam Liberation Front, for instance, the most
important aim of the Front was ‘the creation of a common
nationality and a common language for the tribes of Southern Sudan.
And in this, consideration should be given to the Pidgin Arabic’
(cf. Bashir1). In Uganda, the former
President Idi Amin, always preferred to speak in Kinubi, a Creole.
The former pidgins and creoles like Swahili, Bazaar Malay, etc.,
have already been developed to function as State languages and are
also used in education mass media, etc. In view of these nothing but
wrong notions and inertia of the educated Nagas prevent the Naga
Pidgin from playing the major role in the primary education of the
children of the minority ethnic groups. And in the process it is the
Naga children that suffer and lose and not the Pidgin.
There is, however, some minor technical difficulty in using the
Naga Pidgin in the present state of affairs in education owing to
the widespread variations found across ethnic/linguistic boundaries
as well as in the speech of the same individual. These are, however,
not insurmountable ones inasmuch as every language used in education
shows variation of different range. Since variation is found in
almost all languages used in education, it might be fruitful of have
a look at the nature of variation found in pidgin and the other
languages used in education. Such an exercise would also help us in
understanding the means and methods adopted to handle the problem of
variations found in the other languages used in education.
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Variation
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Variation of diverse kinds is
a feature found with every language spoken by a sizable population
over a large territory, irrespective of the fact whether a language
is a Pidgin/creole or a natural language, i.e., a language
genetically related to the other languages of the family. Though
both these two types of languages show variation, there is a
qualitative difference in the nature of variation found between the
two. The most important one relates to the role/function of the
variation. While referring to the functional value of the variation
found in language, Neustupny (1974:44) states that the variations
are said to be functional if the variable feature is determined by
some social functions. In other words, when speech differences are
correlated with the speaker’s status and the setting, the
variations are sociolinguistic (cf. Bright and Ramanujan 1972:160).
If the variation is looked at from this angle, only the variation
found in the natural languages could be claimed to be
1quoted in Bell 1975.
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and as such sociolinguistic, in that the variation in the natural
languages are used to express a whole gamut of emotions, overtones
and attitudes. As opposed to this, the variation found in pidgin/creoles
are dysfunctional in that the same speaker on different occasions
might use two or more forms without any social relevance, i.e., for
dealing with different contexts or social situations, the pidgin/creoles
speakers have no choice of code or variety of langauge related
languages and pidgins, Hymes (1967:9) claims that a pidgin is not a
normal language as a speaker is limited to the use of a code with
but one style or register whereas no normal community is limited in
response to a single variety of code to such an unchanging monotony
which would preclude the possibility of indicating respect,
indolence, humour, role distance etc. by switching over from one
code variety to another. While commenting on the statement of Hymes
on the abnormality of pidgins as languages, Samarin (1971:122)
states that ‘what is needed to produce a "code
variety" is unclear’. He further states that ‘politeness is
an attitude, not necessarily a part of the semantic structure of
language’. He, however, agrees with Hymes and other scholars, that
from a Sociolinguistic point of view, a pidgin is not a normal
language, rather it is a language but a different kind of language.
The variation can also be looked upon from the point of view of
the availability of a norm accepted by the entire speech community.
The evolution of a variety as a norm is primarily a sociohistorical
factor, with the linguistic structure playing no role in it. But
once a variety attains the status of a norm, it also attains a
prestige with the concomitant value judgments like right/wrong,
appropriate/inappropriate, etc., in respect of the other varieties.
It is commonly accepted that the pidgins have no norms nor
prestige attached to any variety. Win ford (1975) claims that
stylistic variation and the conditioning of the linguistic variables
even in the peer group session correlating with the socio-economic
status is found also in the creoles, for instance, Trinidad’s
English creole. As opposed to the absence of a norm found in a
pidgin, the speaker of the natural languages is keenly aware of the
value and prestige attached to the certain variety and constantly
endeavors to adjust his/her speech to the prestige form. In fact
the possession of a single superposed variety acceptable to the
speakers of all the varieties concerned was considered the most
important criterion for determining whether or not mutually
intelligible varieties belong to a single language (cf. Ferguson and
Gumperz (1960:5). Such a criterion might be valid for literary
societies which reserve a single variety for literary purposes,
while the other varieties are used by different segments of the
society concerned or in different domains/role
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