Language Shift and Community Identity Among the Shuwa Arab Community of Borno State: An Ethnolinguistic Study

This study presents an in-depth ethnolinguistic investigation of language shift and community identity among the Shuwa Arab community of Borno State, North East Nigeria, developing an original analysis of how a historically distinct linguistic minority navigates language maintenance, shift, and identity in conditions of acute demographic, political, and security pressure. The Shuwa Arabs are one of Nigeria's lesser-known linguistic minorities, speaking a Chadic Arabic variety distinct from Standard Arabic, yet their language ecology has not been the subject of sustained scholarly investigation despite the community's historical significance in the Lake Chad basin. The research adopts an ethnolinguistic case study methodology combining extended community ethnography, sociolinguistic survey of 150 households, language use diary studies with 30 participants, and audio-visual documentation of community communication events. The theoretical framework integrates ethnolinguistic vitality theory with the language ecology approach and postcolonial identity theory. Findings document advanced language shift toward Kanuri and Hausa in urban Maiduguri Shuwa communities, while rural lake-region communities show stronger maintenance of Chadic Arabic, linked to pastoral occupation patterns and lower integration with urban institutional structures. Security displacement has accelerated shift among IDPs, with documentation showing rapid Kanuri and Pidgin adoption in camp settings. The study makes an original empirical and theoretical contribution to the sociolinguistics of minority Arabic-speaking communities in sub-Saharan Africa. Keywords: language shift, Shuwa Arab, community identity, Borno State, ethnolinguistic vitality.