This study aims at investigating the sociolinguistic situation in Northern Bahr el Ghazal State in
South Sudan focusing on Aweil Town. It is a language survey that attempts to describe language
acquisition, knowledge, use and attitude through a number of indictors/ independent variables
(age, sex, education, religion, parents’ profession, respondents’ residential area, family
residential area, displacement, ethnic origin and place of birth). This is in order to make
conclusion on the present situation as well as the future trends of sociolinguistic development in
the area under study.
The study being of mainly quantitative nature, it adopts the descriptive-analytical method. It
essentially rests on primary data collected through four tools: a twenty-five questionnaire
items were administered to 846 respondents, three focus group discussions held with 12
participants, in-depth interviews with 31 persons with different ages, jobs and ethnic
backgrounds, in Aweil, Juba, Wau and Khartoum and participants observations.
Descriptive statistical technique was used to make frequency tables of variables and statistical
analytical techniques were also used to investigate the associations between different variables.
Hence, cross tabulation was used to examine the associations between different variables and
binary logistic regression model is used to estimate the effect of independent variables
(collectively) on a dependent variables. The data were processed using SPSS (version 20)
whereas the qualitative data were processed manually.
The study came with a number of findings, the most important of which were: Dinka is the
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most commonly acquired language as L1 and dominantly used at home, at public domains and
story telling. Arabic and English are the commonly acquired languages as L2 and L3,
respectively; Arabic- besides MT- is often used at home and at public domains. These findings
stand as an indicator of language change, especially among young generations since some
functions of the indigenous languages are carried by Arabic and English. In language attitude,
the study revealed a higher preference of Arabic and English by respondents for their children,
mainly for practical reasons (e.g. jobs) and status. So, the South Sudanese indigenous languages
are ultimately endangered since the power-relations and the production-relations are not in their
favour.
In the light of the above findings, the study recommends that strong measures should be taken
to enhance the status of South Sudanese languages to increase their values in the linguistic
market by using them in more formal domains and in education. As areas for further studies, the
study suggests conducting sociolinguistic surveys to draw a sociolinguistic profile of South
Sudan in order to develop language policies representing the ethno-linguistic diversity of the
country.
سوسن عبد العزيز محمد ناشد | Sawsan Abdel Aziz Mohammed Nashid | 1941