Attitudes of Ghanaian Students towards the Establishment of a National Language in Ghana
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53103/cjlls.v3i6.129Keywords:
National Language, Ghana, Language Attitudes, Language PolicyAbstract
The research investigated language attitudes of Ghanaian Senior High Students of the final year towards their own languages, other Ghanaian and African languages that they speak and towards English with the aim of finding out whether any relationships exist between languages that a person speaks and his or her attitudes towards them as well as towards the native speakers of those languages and compares these attitudes with their attitudes towards English, the official language of the country. The research was also conducted to find out if a Ghanaian language will in future replace English as the national language. The methodology employed was the impressionistic approach. Key findings revealed that students have very strong attitudes towards their own languages. It was also discovered that they have relatively less positive attitudes towards other Ghanaian languages that they speak as they were learnt for instrumental reasons. Overwhelmingly, students showed very high positive attitudes towards English to an extent of willing to speak it often to their children in their future homes. It was concluded that there are unlikely chances for any Ghanaian language to replace English.
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