Theorising Language Shift and Maintenance in the Hausa Diaspora: A Multi-Site Ethnographic Study

Language shift processes in diaspora communities involve complex interactions between structural linguistic factors, social network dynamics, identity politics, and the institutional resources available to support maintenance, yet theoretically adequate accounts of these processes drawing on African diaspora language contexts are limited in the global sociolinguistics literature. This doctoral study develops an original theoretical framework for Hausa diaspora language shift and maintenance, drawing on multi-site ethnographic fieldwork in three Hausa communities located in different host-language environments: Lagos (Yoruba-dominant), Ibadan (Yoruba-dominant), and Onitsha (Igbo-dominant). A five-year multi-site ethnographic design was employed, combining participant observation in community religious, commercial, and domestic settings; life history interviews with 90 community members spanning three generations; longitudinal tracking of language use changes in 30 focal families; and social network analysis of language interaction patterns across residential, occupational, and religious network nodes. The comparative analysis of three sites enables systematic assessment of how host language environment, host community institutional resources for Hausa maintenance, and generation-specific factors combine to produce different shift and maintenance trajectories. Original theoretical contributions include a Hausa Diaspora Language Dynamics Theory that articulates the conditions under which stable bilingualism, progressive shift, or accelerated maintenance occur in different community contexts. The theory has broader applicability to West African urban diaspora language dynamics. The study contributes the first multi-site long-term ethnographic study of Hausa diaspora language dynamics in southern Nigeria. Keywords: Hausa diaspora, Language shift, Language maintenance, Ethnography, Sociolinguistics.