Language and Gender Imbalance in Nigerian Politics: Focus on Gendered Expressions in the Nigerian Politics

Abstract

One thing that has often astounded and confounded thinkers and scholars is language, the human specific system of communication through conventional signs and representations. Though often taken for granted, a short reflection on language reveals the pervasive influence it exerts on every stratum of life and society. In our world of words and, the concomitant information explosion, there is no keeping out language as all issues are language issues, to paraphrase George Orwell. As language manifests certain peculiarities based on regional/geographical, social, educational and functional differences, language varieties are distinguishable in various contexts. The language of politics manifests this linguistic situation and it is marked by certain features that make it distinctive. This paper discusses language and gender imbalance in Nigerian politics: Focus on Expressions in the Nigerian Politics that Depict Gender Imbalance. Gender imbalance in politics has been a problem. Furthermore, there has been an imbalance in the number of positions occupied by males and females in politics, the number of males in politics outnumber that of the females. In this article, the researcher clarifies outstanding concepts, highlights some expressions on politics that depict imbalance, discusses women in time perspectives, explains the attempts by women to come out of the shadows and move to prominence, discusses the factors which stood between women and self-actualization and proffers solutions to the imbalance. Qualitative Descriptive method was used. The researcher made use of the theory of communicative competence propounded by Dell Hymes (1966). The data for this study was gathered from secondary sources which include libraries, published research papers, published books and websites. From the discussion so far, the findings show that there is gender imbalance in Nigeria.