Many educated and non-educated people, political leaders, clergy men and women understand and communicate in Pidgin. Most people from the Delta State of Nigeria have the ability to communicate fluently in Pidgin. Pidgin spoken in Nigeria features a unique pronunciation which in Standard English could turn out to mean something else in Pidgin. Munzdi (1995) observes that Nigerian Pidgin which until recently has been restricted to oral communication and to the humour columns of some newspapers, is now being used for news broadcast in government owned radio/television stations and for serious poetry and drama by several well-educated poets and playwrights. Nigerians have continued to add flavor to the language which could be seen in the development of Nigeria Music and Film Industry, which the government is promoting through the presentation of programmes on radio and television stations, which are now broadcast in Pidgin. In West Africa, Nigeria is distinguished in profuseness as far as Pidgin is concerned.
This variety of English is recognized as a meaningful language of inter-tribal communications and as such makes people to realize its communication role. Nowadays, Pidgin enjoys a rather ambivalent status in community market among traders who are from various indigenous groups. Ipodo Market is situated in Ikeja area of Lagos which is known to be a densely populated area with people of different ethnic groups and Pidgin serves as a convenient means of communication. The main focus of this work is restricted to the variety of English spoken in the vicinity of Ipodo Market in Lagos, known as Pidgin. This is because Pidgin is considered to be a form of English and not a language in its own right. But many Nigerians who speak Pidgin sometimes feel ashamed to associate with the language in public. According to Fromkin and Rodma (1974). Pidgin is an unruly bastard jargon, filled with nursery embellishment, vulgarism and corruption. To others, Pidgin is jargon, corrupt and a language that is not systematic. Pidgin to some scholars is a language that has no function. It identified the morphology, syntactual process of this language and how useful it has been in terms of communication.
The study was restricted to the type of Pidgin spoken among traders in Ipodo Market. It explored the functions of language and that of Pidgin which is the language in discourse.
This research was propelled by the intention to investigate the creative ability of Nigerian Pidgin as an effective communication in a multi-ethnic society such as Ipodo Community Market in Ikeja.
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