Veritatis Gaudium: Multidisciplinary Journal of Postgraduate Studies

This paper focuses on the general role of Communication as a vehicle for driving popular culture. It pays attention to how communication can be deployed to enhance Nigeria’s popular culture and increase Nigerian works of art. The paper portrays communication as an important vehicle for promoting Nigerian culture. It argues that various cultures must employ disparate languages appropriately to reflect the works of Nigerian arts and to promote her cultural heritage. To drive this point home, the paper does a content analysis of selected writings of a popular Nigerian author, Amos Tutuola, whose novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952), is written in Nigerian English. The paper finds a nexus between language and culture. It draws from the Social Responsibility Theory of the Press, which sees the media as agents of nation-building. The paper further argues that the communication vehicle of every culture, such as Nigerian English, is distinctive and not a poor or substandard variant of any other. It posits that users of Nigerian English should feel free to use it the way they want, as long as it approximates their message. The paper recommends that policymakers in Nigeria should put in place frameworks to sustain Nigerian English as a distinctive vehicle of communication devoid of the encumbrances of any other foreign language.

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