My blood, my Nation

Identity is an important phenomenon both in traditional and in modern Africa. Before the advent of colonialism, people and communities were identified largely by ethnicity within a political framework. However, within each of the ethnic units, there were other parameters by which people were sub-categorised such as family, ancestral trade/calling, Many language attitude studies have investigated the relative popularity of competing languages in multi-ethnic and multilingual mainstream societies (GREENFIELD 1968, LAMBERT et al. 1975, GILES et al. 1983). In post-colonial Africa focus is on the competition between the languages of complex ethnic societies and erstwhile kingdoms now yoked together as one. In communities which straddle the continents' arbitrarily fixed international political boundaries, attitudes have been established as expressing the political alignments and preferred identities of their residents (OMONIYI, B. 1994). This paper will attempt to demonstrate that the language attitudes of members of borderland communities are also expressions of their identities which are variable. The data upon which the discussion will be based come from the Idiroko/Igolo border on Nigeria's southwestern frontier with Benin. Sociolinguistics, Boundaries, Bilateral, Language Politics, Identity.