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Abstract:
The attitudes of the Idoani community members to Amusigbo, Iyayu and standard Yoruba are examined in this paper. The research findings show that standard Yoruba, Amusigbo, and Iyayu are codes that are used in Idoani community and that standard Yoruba is the Lingua Franca in the community. The findings also show, among others, that the attitudes of the Amusigbo respondents towards the Amusigbo code are not positive enough to ensure the future survival of the code and that the attitudes of the Iyayu respondents towards the Iyayu code show that the Iyayu people embrace the Yoruba language because of the inevitable interaction with the non-Iyayu members of the community. It is further shown that when the High and Low varieties of a language exist in a community it is possible for the Low variety to be threatened with extinction because of the factors of education and age and that when two different codes are used in a community it is possible for the speakers of a code with Low status to do everything possible to ensure the survival of the code. The finding has also contributed to our knowledge of the fact that dialects of a language can be endangered for social and political reasons.

Keywords: language, dialect, attitudes, mutual intelligibility, multilingualism.

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