Igbo Language and Ethnic Identity in the Context of Nigerian Nation-Building: A Critical Political Linguistics Investigation

This dissertation conducts a critical political linguistics investigation of the relationship between Igbo language, ethnic identity, and Nigerian nation-building discourse from independence in 1960 to the present, examining how Igbo language has been positioned, deployed, and contested as a resource in the competing projects of Igbo ethnic nationalism and Nigerian national integration. The language-identity-nation nexus in Nigeria is one of the most politically charged domains of sociolinguistic enquiry, yet a sustained critical political linguistics monograph on the specifically Igbo dimension of this nexus has not been produced. The study assembles a multi-source discourse corpus including government policy documents, political party manifestoes, Igbo cultural organisation position papers, intellectual publications, and social media political discourse from 2019 to 2024. Critical political linguistics analysis, drawing on Fairclough's critical discourse analysis, Gal and Irvine's semiotic processes, and Wodak's discourse-historical approach, is applied to trace the ideological work performed by constructions of Igbo language across national and ethnic political discourse. Findings reveal a fundamental discursive tension between federally integrationist language ideologies that position Igbo as one regional language among equals and Igbo nationalist ideologies that position the language as the civilisational essence of a people whose full political recognition within Nigeria remains unresolved. The study identifies how both ideological positions construct Igbo language as a political resource rather than a communicative practice, with consequences for ordinary language maintenance. Keywords: Igbo language, ethnic identity, political linguistics, nation-building, Nigeria.