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I argue in this paper that the new language policy of the Nigerian Army recognizes and promotes the dominant languages as resources for military training, intelligence gathering and peace building, while the dominated languages are marginalized, alienated and relegated, thus the policy infringes on the fundamental linguistic rights of speakers of minoritized languages in the army. I further maintain that the Nigerian Army's exclusive language policy is harmful to the army as a national institution and call for explicit status planning of the Nigerian Pidgin to serve as the language of wider communication in the army in response to its emerging sociolinguistic challenges.

In Cross River State, South-eastern Nigeria, languages incorporate a number of loanwords as personal names as a result of increasing contact with other languages and cultures. Such words are, therefore, borrowed wholesale or adapted phonologically into the onomasticon of the recipient languages, thus gaining wideranging acceptance, currency and usage. This paper examines the phenomenon of language contact and naming in three linguistic communities along the Cross River Basin – Agwagune, Ejagham and Lokaa – in relation to Efik, a dominant language and culture, which itself is in constant contact with English. The paper seeks to show the intricate interrelationship and direction of influence between personal names in the donor and recipient languages, taking into account ethnic hierarchies, and social formations that are found in the context where personal names are given and used. The study relied on Thomason and Kauffman's (1988) integrated theory of language contact as its theoretical plank, which maintains that there is a strong tendency for speakers of less powerful languages to borrow from the economically and politically powerful languages to enhance their internal resourcefulness. Since names are lexical items in a language, they are not immune to this contact influence. Audio-video data and text materials were elicited from sampled respondents who were contact names bearers and their community members through an ethnographic qualitative approach. The paper concludes with the claim that the interplay of forces like trade, religion and other socio-cultural factors are the main vectors of name borrowing, which are social praxis for negotiating cultural boundaries and relationships as well as indexing the notion of power, personhood and sociocentrism, given the effect of contact. The paper, therefore, sheds some light on ethnic mechanisms of shared social behaviour signalled by shared personal names, as it attempts to understand local settings in greater depth.

Food and foodways are essential components of the Efik biocultural system, as the Efik people of Southern Cross River State, Southeastern Nigeria, are famous for their rich dietary history and cuisine tradition. Food and foodways are, therefore, quintessential aspects of the Efik cultural history and social structure, which are intergenerational. This article explores the use of food symbolisms (embedded in rich metaphors) in Efik proverbs, which are perceptual frameworks or conceptual grids that highlight fundamental cultural values and mores as well as reinforce and instill acceptable social behavior. The study is rooted in the Afrocentric paradigm, which re-asserts the interpretation of Efik proverbs based on African values, perspectives, and narratives, and adds relevant ontological and epistemological analytic dimensions in operationalizing the collective and contextual understanding of Efik (African) proverbs. In this context, the Efik view the world through the lens of food, exploring the role of food and eating correlates as means of addressing their society's psychodynamic challenges, which paradoxically are not about food.

Recently, there has been upsurge in the advertisement of various types of herbal aphrodisiacs targeted at Nigerian men in the market environment in Calabar metropolis, southeastern Nigeria. This article explores the metaphoric construction of male genitalia in the marketing of these products from the perspective of Lakoff and Johnson's (1980, 2003) conceptual metaphor theory (CMT). Drawing on qualitative data sourced through semi-structured interviews with 30 participants who were purposively sampled, the study provides a nuanced cultural understanding of men's genitalia as depicted in herbal aphrodisiac ad contents and reveals that the penis is metaphorically (re)constructed as hard, strong, aggressive and destructive which are stereotyped instincts of phallic masculinity. We conclude that the marketing of herbal aphrodisiacs, apart from its claim of providing herbal remedies to men (and women's) sexual dysfunctions, is a social site for reinforcing underlying stance and ideological structure that inform the expression of male sexual power.

This article explores the rejection of indigenous African (first) names and the preference for European and westernized names by some Nigerian youth, especially those living in Calabar metropolis, Cross River State, South-eastern Nigeria. The article investigates the personal, cultural and social motivations for foreign names adoption and the subjective interpretations of both rejected and adopted first names. The study is rooted in the Afrocentric paradigm which is grounded in the historical and cultural reality of the African experience to express its core principles of cultural assertion, self-pride and Africa-centered identity. Data for the study was sourced through participant observations, semi-structured interviews and metalinguistic conversations with participants who have been involved in name-changing practices in the last 5 years. The study discovers that young people adopt foreign (first) names to challenge their stereotyped ethnic identities and to contest existing traditional norms about naming. This phenomenon tends to be propelled by additional social, personal and religious factors including, style, personal taste, creativity, religious conversion and the flow of other social capital. This often results in a dramatic drift in African traditional naming practices which tends to erase or subjugate African naming protocol and identities.