Motor Park Discourse in South-Western Nigeria: Relations among Discourse, Group Ideology and Social Identity

Abstract

This study examines Motor Park Discourse in South-Western Nigeria with a view to presenting a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic perspective on the interrelations existing among the concepts of discourse, (group) ideology, and social identity as key interfaces of language practices. The aim is to isolate some of the ideological patterns underlying social-linguistic construction, on the one hand, and discourse practices on the other, among participants in the studied speech community, and then to identify how such constructionism and discourse acts engender both speech-and-social identity. Thus, by relying on contemporary theories of discourse, existing literature on the cross-disciplines and data collected from motor parks across South-Western Nigeria, the study seeks to establish generalisations which bare themselves in light of the isolated group of Yoruba ethnographic speech community, by reappraising some of the theoretical positions amenable from other cultures for instance that „identity is the product rather than the source of linguistic and other semiotic practices, and is therefore a social and cultural rather than primarily internal psychological phenomenon.