Student Pidgin – A Ghanaian Pidgin-Sound-Alike Youth Language

Abstract

Student Pidgin is a Ghanaian Pidgin-sound-alike Youth Language that so far as we can ascertain was started in the high-prestige boys’ secondary schools in Cape Coast in the late 1960s – early 1970s. It is today the unmarked code of communication among secondary and tertiary male students and is gradually being adopted by female students in the same institutions. Whereas Student Pidgin (SP) is grammatically close to Ghanaian Pidgin English (GhaPE) and can be classified as a WAP (West African Pidgin), it is sociolinguistically not a pidgin. This chapter investigates the structural, lexical and idiomatic peculiarities of SP, the identity assumed by its speakers, and it examines how it fits into the pattern of other urban youth languages in Africa.