Discourse Ethics and Language Rights in Nigerian Minority Language Policy: A Philosophical and Applied Linguistic Analysis

The linguistic rights of minority language communities in Nigeria have been the subject of policy debate and scholarly discussion, but a rigorous philosophical analysis of the ethical foundations of language rights claims, integrated with applied linguistic analysis of the discourses through which these claims are articulated and contested, has not been developed in the Nigerian context. This dissertation develops a discourse ethics and language rights analysis of Nigerian minority language policy, making original contributions at the intersection of political philosophy, ethics of language, and applied linguistics. The theoretical programme engages with discourse ethics as developed by Habermas and Apel, language rights theory from Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson, and African communitarian ethics to construct a hybrid normative framework that specifies the conditions under which language rights claims have ethical validity and the obligations they generate for the Nigerian state. The empirical programme analyses the policy discourse of three spheres: federal language policy documents and parliamentary debates about language legislation; minority language advocacy discourse from five language advocacy organizations representing communities in the Niger Delta, Middle Belt, and Southeast; and media discourse representing and countering minority language rights claims. Discourse analysis of advocacy organization communication reveals that rights claims are consistently articulated through three primary frames: cultural survival discourse, educational disadvantage discourse, and democratic participation discourse, each appealing to different normative bases. Counter-discourse from federal policy documents systematically deploys national unity and resource constraint arguments to resist rights claims. The dissertation develops concrete policy recommendations grounded in the discourse ethics framework. Keywords: language rights, minority languages, discourse ethics, Nigerian language policy, political philosophy.