Managing Multilingualism in Nigerian Corporate Workplaces: Language Policy in Practice at Selected Lagos Firms

This study examines how multilingualism is managed in practice within Nigerian corporate workplaces in Lagos, investigating the informal and formal language policies that govern communication in ethnically diverse organisations and the communicative challenges and opportunities that multilingualism creates. Nigerian organisations employ staff from across the country's diverse ethnic and linguistic communities, and English functions as the formal corporate language, but the workplace is also a space of informal Yoruba, Pidgin English, Igbo, and other language use that shapes team dynamics, social inclusion, and organisational culture in ways that formal language policy rarely addresses. The study conducts ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews across three medium-to-large Lagos-based organisations in the financial services, media, and construction sectors over a 12-week observation period. A total of 40 interviews were conducted with employees at various organisational levels. Analysis examines how informal language use affects inter-ethnic team dynamics, how language boundaries are negotiated in mixed-ethnic groups, the experiences of employees from language minority backgrounds, and how organisations respond to language-related workplace tensions. Findings reveal that informal Yoruba use in Lagos workplaces creates social advantages for Yoruba-speaking employees that can disadvantage colleagues from other language backgrounds, and that most organisations lack formal diversity communication policies to address this. Recommendations include the development of workplace communication inclusivity frameworks for Nigerian corporate HR departments. Keywords: workplace multilingualism, language policy, corporate communication, Lagos, inclusivity.