February 21, 2017 – A team from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) visited Ashesi to hold a workshop on Pidgin English and also inform students about opportunities available at their organization. In starting up the BBC Pidgin service, the BBC team, in the past year, has worked with various groups across sub Saharan Africa, including college students, in designing content for the service.
“The workshops have allowed us to exchange ideas for the development of a pidgin service that will air content not just for Nigeria but for individuals that speak pidgin in neighbouring countries,” said Sarah Ansah, Nigerian Project Manager, BBC Africa
As part of the workshop at Ashesi, the BBC team interacted with students in a discussion on the appropriateness of pidgin within the Ghanaian community. In several communities in Ghana there is pushback against using pidgin English in professional and formal settings, a phenomenon that has spurred unending debates.
“English is essentially pidgin by definition,” explained Caira Lee Faculty Intern at Ashesi, in her defense of using Pidgin English. “It just happens to be the most widely spoken, so it’s important to deprogram people’s minds about English language’s superiority while allowing them to embrace Ghanaian pidgin as a language on its own.”
The BBC Pidgin service, mainly targeted at the youth, will serve as a medium for reaching larger audiences in a language that they are closely familiar with.
“Language is all about communication,” said Bilkisu Labaran, Editor at BBC World Service. “As long as the society that uses it finds it useful as a tool of communication, it’s a language. Most importantly, language is a living thing; it evolves and adapts to societal needs as it changes, and the very existence of pidgin, makes a statement about its importance.”