CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the Study 

Advertising is basically a system of disseminating information about specific goods, services or ideas to a target audience by specified sponsors, through multi-faceted means.

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines advertising as 

The action of calling something (a commodity for sale, a service offered or desired) to the attention of the public especially by means of printed or broadcast paid announcements (31). 

Thus, advertising implies the techniques and practices used to bring specific products, services and opinions to public notice for the purpose of persuading the public to respond in a certain way towards what is advertised. Advertising involves communication and communication involves language use. Language is the major means of human communication and interaction. Sapir explains language as

... a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols (8). 

Thus, language forms the basis for all forms of human activities and interaction. Advertising as a form of human interaction makes use of language and Brook says that “the words of advertising need to be chosen with care if they are not going to have ridiculous effects” (167). 

In Nigeria, the language of the mass media is essentially English. This does not mean that our indigenous languages are not used in media advertising, but English is the main language of the mass media. The English language is non-indigenous to Nigeria, but it is one of the nation’s official languages and her lingua-franca.

The establishment of Lagos as a British colony in 1862 officially marked the advent of the English language to Nigeria, but there are traces of the existence of this language in Nigeria before 1862. With the arrival of the Europeans in Nigeria for political, economic or religious conquest, there arose a need for communication between English and Nigerians from different ethnic groups. The Europeans, according to Omolewa (in Uzoezie), had a very poor opinion of the vernacular which they considered neither very extensive nor of very high quality. So, these Europeans decided to use their own language in communication with Nigerians (163). 

The first set of Europeans to arrive at the shores of Nigeria were Portuguese. They made contacts with some Southern Kingdoms such as old Calabar and the Empire of Benin, around the seventeenth century. The British traders were the next batch of Europeans who came to Nigeria. According to Uzoezie, the British ousted the Portuguese and replaced the contact language with English as the language of diplomacy and trade (163). Quoting Omolewa cited in Adetugbo, Uzoezie says that England also acquired the monopoly for slave trading along the West Coast of Africa by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 and the subsequent British success in the famous race to Nikki in 1884, and according to him, the ground was, thus, already prepared for the permeation of the English language along the coast and the hinterlands. Due to the contacts between the English language, Portuguese, and some indigenous languages, a form of inter-language (pidgin) emerged (164). 

In 1862, the official annexation of Lagos as a British colony took place; thus, the British needed manpower badly for running its affairs of government in Nigeria, and having adopted English as the language it would utilize in government, they then had to teach the indigenes English in order to facilitate better interaction, understanding and governance. In 1882, the English language was adopted as the mode of instruction for training of the badly needed manpower. 

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