Language Contact And Language Choice Among The Frafra People In Damongo In The Savannah Region Of Ghana

Abstract

This study explored language choice for informal interactions of the Frafra people of the Upper East Region of Ghana, who migrated in the early 1960s to settle in Damongo in the then West Gonja District in the Northern region of Ghana for farming among the Gonja of the migration destination. As is often the case in multilingual communities, a speaker needs to make the right language choice to be able to communicate with others. This study therefore investigated the language use of the migrant settlers in their new environment. The main objective of this study was first to determine the survival or otherwise of Grune and to account for the choice of a particular language for informal interactions between migrant settlers (the Frafras) and native people of Damongo, Analysis of the data was done within the general framework of communication accommodation theory and the constructivist paradigm. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 263 participants in 6 Frafra communities around Damongo in the West Gonja Municipality. The main findings of the study are that among the Frafras, Grune has been maintained and is widely spoken regardless of generation, Hausa and Grune by older generation of settlers and English, Gonja and Hausa by younger generations. There is no one dominant language for informal interactions between migrant settlers and the Gonjas. At the same time, the younger generation code-switches or code-mixes English, Hausa, Grune and Gonja.  In spite of this, Hausa remains the most preferred language for informal interactions by the older settler generation with Gonjas for informal interactions.