URBAN YOUTH LANGUAGE OF ONITSHA, AN EMERGING SPEECH STYLE

This study examined the emergence variety of Igbo in Onitsha and the study focused on the speech style of Urban Onitsha youths. The emergence of globalization in the 21 century has made the youth to employ language in a remarkable way to shape and advance to new Identity for urban youth language, emerging speech style of youths which may be regarded as a new dialect and every day, it continues to experience and go through innovations. The major focus of this research work is to analyse where and how the the emerging speech style affect the lives of the youth and Igbo people as a whole.The research questions are, who are the speakers of youth language in urban Onitsha and how the urban youth language develop.The features of youth language in urban Onitsha, Is urban Onitsha youth language an anti-language? And how the urban language contribute to communication among the youth and the older youth?. The objectives of this study are to identify the speakers of youth’s language in Urban Onitsha. To find out how youth language develops in urban Onitsha, Examine the features of the youth language of urban Onitsha,to determine the status of the youth language in the society and examine how the youth language of urban Onitsha contribute to the mutual understanding and communications among the youths and other members.This research employs both the primary and secondary method of data collecting needed for this research,since the main focus of this research work where youths, particularly youth who are fans of Onitsha language. Part of the data were collected from prominent speakers of Igbo language from the department of Linguistic studies were also used as a method of data collection. It was found from the study that Youth language emerge from the mainstream language and has slangs, heavy vernacular, pidgin,non standard vocabulary, style shifting,and other host of linguistics and others as it's scope and features. Youths as one of the most influential social groups has employed their own language in a remarkable way to shape and advance to new Identity for themselves.