Uses, function, and stigmatization of Pidgin in Ghana

The function of GhP is rather restricted in comparison with other WAPs. For example, in contrast to e.g. Nigeria and Cameroon, Pidgin is rarely used in the media. Ghanaian newspapers are almost exclusively in StGhE or Ghanaian languages and even their cartoons, where (quasi-)Pidgin often features in other West African newspapers, are surprisingly standard-like. A kind of mock pidgin is used in satire in some of the political magazines. In these publications Pidgin is attributed to uneducated speakers, policemen, or soldiers. Films are usually in StGhE. There are a few productions in which uneducated characters use Pidgin, but its use on screen is the exception rather than the rule. Pidgin used to be rarely heard on the radio, although Pidgin commercials seem to have come into fashion in recent times. Again it is uneducated characters who speak GhP. The function of Pidgin here is more to amuse and to create an authentic atmosphere than to reach a wider public.

Pidgin in Ghana is more stigmatized and less widespread in terms of area and number of speakers than it is in other anglophone West African countries. Especially among the educated section of Ghanaian society (but this is also true for less educated Ghanaians) Pidgin is still frowned upon as a mark of illiteracy and unpolished manners. GhP does, however, enjoy covert prestige: it is one of the preferred codes that a growing number of educated adult males use in an urban, informal, and unmonitored setting: in ‘drinking spots’, discos, among friends, etc. But in formal and traditional situations Pidgin is felt to be inadequate, rude, or disrespectful and a Ghanaian language or Standard English is preferred.

As new generations of scholars enter teaching positions at the universities, it is only a matter of time before Pidgin English will be heard in informal conversations between university lecturers. This is because unlike their senior and linguistically more conservative colleagues, young male Ghanaian lecturers did speak Pidgin at the time they were students.

The considerable stigmatization of GhP in some sections of Ghanaian society contributes to the widespread conviction that there is no true Ghanaian Pidgin and the belief that Pidgin is not a home-grown phenomenon but was introduced from other West African countries, especially Liberia and Nigeria.