Sociopragmatics of Code Switching and Code Mixing in Reconciliation Case Proceedings : Shariah Courts of Northern Nigeria

Due to the peculiarity of the spoken language identified among parties involved in Reconciliation Case Proceedings (RCP) and their arbitrators in the Shariah Reconciliation courts, this paper explores some sociopragmatic aspects of the Hausa natives (Northern Nigeria, West Africa) Shariah reconciliation Courts judicial discourse. To this end, 12 various case proceedings of family disputes on marital issues were recorded through audiovisual recordings. The data were coded and analysed using Nvivo 10, focusing, amongst others, on Searle’s taxonomy of speech acts of expressiveness. It was found that Code Switching and Code Mixings (CSCM) appeared/employed constantly by almost all classes of speakers during RCP. The findings revealed that it is a sociopragmatic culture, behaviour and attribute of Hausa speakers of using Hausa switched, lexical mixed of HausaEnglish or Hausa-Arabic CSCM expressive utterances in RCP. Arabic Terminologies and Hausanised of Arabic lexical are also employed by speakers in order to affirm, assert reciprocity, show respect, express gratitude or intention, offer defence, minimise imposition, and seek confirmation or explanation as well as Generic or honorific names/titles in RCP. Finally, the paper demonstrates that it is a cultural practice that during RCP, Hausa language is dominantly used as a medium of communication, hence, sometimes due to the Arabic and Islamic cultural influence of Hausa natives as well as being English as an official language in the Nigerian settings, CSCM of both the three languages is found to be part of the common feature of RCP within Bauchi state Shariah Commission of Nigeria.


Introduction
Across the globe, the general trend notable in the development of the modern Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) concepts is that, they were borne out of the quest for alternative means of resolving dispute other than through litigation.Without doubt, it is quite manifested that the adversarial system of litigation can no longer sustain the justice delivery process as the only access to justice.A common consensus resonating in the contemporary literary works on the administration of justice by legal scholars is that the litigation process is grossly inadequate to serve as the sole dispute resolution mechanism in a developing society.A lot of disaffection has been generated by the monopolistic hold of litigation in the administration of justice in Common Law jurisdictions.They range from the congestion of the Court dockets, inordinate delays occasioned by the inflexible, technical and cumbersome procedural system of litigation coupled with the unencumbered access by litigants from Court of first instance to the Supreme Court on the flimsiest and frivolous application which may be totally unrelated to the substantive issues before the Court.Regretfully, Judges watched helplessly, in deference to the hallowed principle of fair hearing and the antiquated aphorism that "a Judge must not descend into the arena" with the resultant effect that the life spans of a case are unduly elongated by the years.The unsettling scenario in the Court system is further compounded by the problem among others, when the public confidence and the psyche of the citizenry in the justice system is gradually wane (Gummi, 2009).
Among other hauls in the administration of justice suffered in our conventional courts include delay and expense to which Nigerian Courts bear the same judicial quagmire.The involvement of the Nigerian courts perhaps could be due to the commonwealth heritage of the common law, Received English Law as well as its associated adversarial system of litigation.It was in a quest for a judicial panacea to overhaul the justice process and ameliorate the problems in the traditional Court system in the United States that the Multi-Door Court was conceptualised by scholars as Professor Frank Sander of Harvard Law School around the year 1976.Apart from the recommended reformation of the Court system and procedures been provided by Sander, several other scholars clarified the existence of alternatives form of litigations other than conventional Court services such as: mediation, conciliation, arbitration as well as hybrid concepts of mediation/arbitration, fact finding and ombudsman (Wali, 2009;Usman, 2009;Barkindo, 2009& Keshavjee, 2013).
In Islamic Law, as highlighted by Barkindo (2009) 'sulh/reconciliation' is institutionalised as a form of dispute resolution process, the other ones being litigation or adversarial method (Khusumuh).Other modes of ADR found in Islamic law include: arbitration (Tahkim), Mediation (Wasatah/Wasatiyyah) or Intercession (Shafa'ah).Islam can be referred to as 'submission' and 'peace', which implies that every Muslim is obliged to submit to the Will of Allah (SWT) in all his socioeconomic, political, religious and all other social interactions or activities.In other words, all human activity should be conducted in accordance with Islamic Law teaching (ADR inclusive).In essence, Shariah which is Islamic Law is to guide human being towards conformity and coordination of his desires and behaviours (activities) with the Will of Allah.Muslim is taught how to conduct all his activities, by providing precise body of laws and the outline of how to conduct the whole sphere of his life in all its aspects as in: spiritual, individual, social, economic, and political.Islam fulfils the need by means of a Divine called Shariah-which has been stated in the Quran and Sunnah (Wali, 2009).
It is equally worth noting that, not all laws that govern human activity has been expressly provided in either the Holy Quran or authentic Sunnah.Some of the rulings of Islamic Law (the larger part of the rulings) are the outcome of various deductive methods of reasoning and understanding of the Fuqaha (Jurists).Hence, those jurists arrived at their legal findings on the basis of their study and deep understanding of the Qur'an and Sunnah.Nevertheless, some of their findings/rulings were highly subjective, in the sense that, they were determined by each scholar's personal approach to and interpretation of the legal source of shariah as well as by the social and intellectual environment of his age, and that environment was in many respects vastly different from others.Some of these deductive conclusions naturally may differ from the conclusion one may reach at the present time (Wali, 2009).
It should however be noted that, the limited scope of the explicit provisions contained in the Qur'an and Sunnah was not due to an oversight on the part of the Law-Giver, but, on the contrary, was meant to provide a most essential safeguard against legal and social rigidity.In fact, according to Wali (2009), it is reasonable to assume that the Law-Giver, never intended to provide explicit Shariah ruling to cover in detail all conceivable exigencies of life.The Law-Giver intended no more no less than to stake out, the legal boundaries within which the community ought to develop, leaving the enormous multitude of possible legal situations to be decided from cases to case in accordance with the requirements of the time and of changing social conditions, by competent and learned Islamic Law jurists.Most of the detailed laws and procedure governing Reconciliation (sulh) under Islamic Law are based on the Ijtihad of the past Fuqaha and therefore amenable to adjustment or even change if the situation and circumstances warrant so.
In applied linguistics, forensic linguistics involved the correlation between law, language and crime.It deals with the wide range of topics, such as the language use in trials, court proceedings, arbitration, mediation and conciliation.The language use involved those of judges, lawyers, arbitrators, and mediators, parties to a case, witnesses and the law itself.The language of the law consists of those in criminal and the civil cases (Shuy, 2007;Khoyi & Behnam, 2014).Forensic linguistics as a new field began to receive attention in the past few decades.The impact of how language support and moulds our society in regulating the social behaviour of any society brands forensic linguistics as essential and outstanding discipline to study.As the operation of the language of the law is created by forensic linguistics, it influences the content, form as well as the interpretation of a legal message (Khoyi & Behnam, 2014).Obviously, the language use (i.e., speech acts) in reconciliation practices falls within the scope of forensic linguistic.

Shariah-based Alternative Dispute Resolution (Sulhu 'reconciliation'
) is expected to develop in-order to meet the challenges of the challenging circumstances, time and place.However, unfortunately the situation is complete opposite, substantially, due to colonialism which halted the development of almost all aspects of Islamic Law beside that of spirituality, through replacing it with secular legal systems, which as a result discouraged the scholars from paying due attention to this aspects of Islamic Law (Sulh 'reconciliation').
Despite the importance which Islamic Law attached to the rapid resolution of disputes or conflicts among its community and the availability of legal materials on it, which have been derived from the Qur'an, hadith and ijmaa'a 'consensus' of the Muslim jurists, it has become regrettable.Therefore, the area has remained scarce in certain languages as English/Hausa.Besides, fiqh 'the knowledge of jurisprudence' of as-sulh 'reconciliation' among a large number of the Muslim judges, Scholars, Islamic Law lecturers, legal practitioners and law students among others, has regrettably remained shallow.This is probably due to lack of efforts in conducting research in this important area of Islamic Law, which, the Muslim Community has been craving for (Keffi 2009).Wali (2009) claims that more than 80% of the litigation in almost all Shariah States in Nigeria go to Shariah Courts/Area Courts, and the bulk majority of the cases litigated therein are social (i.e.marriage, inheritance, small business/trade disputes and other related issues) in nature, among or between blood relations, friends and business associates.Most of those litigations are doing more harm than good to the relationship of the litigants as well causing more economic hardship, backwardness and in terms of resources and time.It also creates enmity among the families and it contributes to the cases of divorce and other attendant consequences.However, in order to avert all these mentioned unsolicited consequences and gain the intended solace, the trend is now shifted to shariah session rooms.In view of the above, it is now high time for the Sharia States, particularly in Nigeria, to give serious attention to this aspect of Islamic Law (Sulh 'Reconciliation'), by developing and encouraging its concept and application.Supporting this assertion, Carr, et al (2012), strongly suggests future research to capture the differences in practice and nature of speech acts of various medium, and establish the insights attached with.
Nonetheless, researches are scanty as regards to exploration and descriptions of the kind of speech acts employed in Reconciliation Cases Proceedings (RCP), most especially the sociopragmatic aspects of the Hausa natives (Northern Nigeria, West Africa) Shariah-Based reconciliation Courts judicial discourse.The study therefore, focuses on exploration of the expressive acts used in shariah-Based RCP peculiar to the Muslims Hausa Natives of Nigeria, particularly the arbitrators, disputing parties and their witnesses, representatives or parties' guardians.Equally, we used Sociopragmatics approach in the description of the use of Code Switching and Code Mixing (CSCM) during the RCP of civil disputes on Marital/Family Issues.This is because Code-switching demonstrates the discursive strategy being employed by bilinguals in achieving social functions and objectives.Bertram (2002) further revealed that Code-switching is a response to social roles and behaviours in course of an interaction and he concludes that it is used to either dissociate a new definition of the interaction within a particular setting or attempt to negotiate a new definition of the interaction within a new setting.And this is in line with Marmaridou (2011), who established that Sociopragmatics associates pragmatic meaning with an evaluation of speakers' social distance, the language community's social rules and appropriateness norms, discourse practices, and accepted behaviours.
The study was situated within the theoretical framework of Searle's (1969Searle's ( , 1979) ) taxonomy of speech acts of expressiveness.

Related Studies
Studies on Switching and mixing of codes have received lots of attention by many scholars regarding many social contexts across the globe.Few of which were focused on switching of codes in conversation relating to individual identity (Auer, 2013), construction and negotiating identity (Ogunbowale, 2012) and interactional evaluation by the military personnel (Singh, 2012).while others paid much attention on the impact of mixing and switching of codes as medium of instruction in teaching processes in school domains (Alenezi, 2010;Ariffin, & Husin, 2011), the use of CSCM as a strategy for better evaluation of pupils efficacy in the kindergartens (Adebayo, ND) as well as a mean of stylistic language use in childhood life within certain African bilingual communities (Brice & Anderson, 1999;Ayeomoni, 2006).Other scholars as Chung, (2006) and Muhammad, (2015) have focused their studies on the use of CSCM as a communicative strategy and constructiveness in discourse to explore the identity of youngsters in both African and Asian bilingual settings.However, not much attention has been paid to the use of CSCM in the legal arena and most particular the shariah-Based Reconciliation courts.And this also triggered our interest of conducting this study.
Brief overview of relevant studies conducted globally regarding reconciliation Case Proceedings and Speech Acts is provided in this section.Of course both speech acts and reconciliation as terms and theories have received much attention within the academic terrain as clearly shown in the works of scholars such as Borneman (2002); Alexander, Batchelor, Durand and Savage (2004); Wallace (2005); Sharma and Chrisman (2007); Blackburn (2007);VanAntwerpen (2008); Alexander (2009); Yamamoto and Obrey (2009); Ramsbotham, Miall and Woodhouse (2011) among several others related to reconciliation which made the literature on reconciliation very rich.However, the attention of most of these studies focuses on reconciliation initiatives and policies over transitional justices for native people in a nontransitional society to the politics of truth and social healings through justice approach specifically for the natives of South Africans, the Japan-Ainu, and USA Hawaiian, besides studies are also conceptual in nature.
In addition, review of literature on similar area revealed the works of Wilson (2001), Corntassel (2009) and many more that made contribution on conceptual writing on native narration of sincere information and communal methods to reconciliation toward legitimisation of the post-apartheid state and the political affairs of reconciliation in culturally diverse people.Others limit their focus on studies to provide working definitions of reconciliation and political dialogues (e.g.Hamber & Kelly 2004;Humphrey 2005;Philpott 2007;Hamber and Kelly 2008).
In the course of our review of the related studies we come across the existence of few studies on reconciliation that was empirically based.Nevertheless the focused geared towards the analysis of the power of a healing safety model, Truth-seeking, truth-telling, and post conflict peacebuilding (Gibson 2004& Mendeloff 2004) as well as pattern in global political affairs and national reconciliation process (Wilson 2003;Gibson 2004), while others as Singh, Kaur and Thuraisingam (2011) focused on Language of resolution of dispute in spiritual speech through Critical Discourse Analysis CDA.Nevertheless, in spite of these attempts, limited empirical studies do exist over sociopragmatics analysis of reconciliation speech acts especially on family related issues base on shariah-based alternative dispute resolution.
Speech acts studies are comprehensively identified across the globe; however few were identified regarding African continent, most especially in the Nigerian context.These studies include: the use of speech acts analysis of political discourse (Agbedo, 2008;Kamalu & Agangan 2011), silence as an aspect of speech acts (Medubi, 2010) in the attempt of exploring the role of conversation in a cross-cultural setting of Nigeria using ethnolinguistic approach as well as the exploration of the societal role of code-switching (Bertram, 2002).Chamo (2013) on the other hand, investigated the style of language use in Hausa movies in building new speech stylishness.According to his findings, Chamo (2013) claims that Hausa movies play significant role in forming traditional values which may be imperative in marking the Hausa's identity within their environment.
Of recent in the quest to identify the nature and role language play in legal scope in RCP, this study traced the interests of many scholars as being focused more on the speech analysis of lawyers from the viewpoint of critical discourse analysis, pragmatics and conversational analysis (Jianmin, 2014;Zhang, 2014), the language of power dominance of Judge/s in legal proceedings within courts (Yu, 2010;Wang, 2014), the Non-Lawyer Agents ad litem courtroom debate (Li, 2014;Zhang, 2014), legal mediation and interpretation (Lu, 2014;Hale, 2004), In fact, recent studies on court interpretation, translation and interpreters have received full attention, especially in China (e.g., Lu, 2014;Cao, 2014;Wang, 2014;Zhou, 2014;Shiyao, 2014;Wang, & Zhang, 2014).Some studies focused on the significance attached to court interpretation in ensuring justice and equality in cases which involved ethnic minorities, foreigners and the deaf people who could not stand for themselves in courts (Cao, 2014;Shiyao, 2014) while others paid much attention on identifying and discussing the features of legal terminologies (Wang, 2014;Zhou, 2014;Wang, & Zhang, 2014).However, with little variation in their major focus: the characteristics and translation procedures in English-Chinese legal jargons as a necessity for modern times (Wang, & Zhang, 2014).Another recent study by Khoyi and Behnam (2014) conducted an analysis of cooperative principles and speech acts in Iranian Law Courts.
It is obvious that many studies are available on language use in trials, court proceedings within conventional courts.The review also established that attention has also been given to certain aspects of language use by judges, lawyers, defendants, plaintiffs and witnesses in both criminal and civil cases.However, the outstanding issue is that most of these studies are barely overviews, and in addition limited to language of conventional courts' proceedings in a form of legal opinions, indictments, lawsuits, briefs and pleadings within the preamble of language and intellectual property law, language and criminal law, constitutional law, language rights, legal language and legal interpretation among others (Shuy, 2007).There is yet no much effort made to explore the sociopragmatic aspect of CSCM in RCP practices by arbitrators, mediators, complainants/claimants (i.e., plaintiffs) and respondents (i.e, defendants).This triggered our interest to delve into the exploration of the sociopragmatic of CSCM speech act of RCP within the Bauchi state sharia commission.Couple with the recommendation of Carr, et al (2012), that research should be conducted to bring out the issues that bring about the differences in practice and nature of speech acts in various medium, aiming at determining the organisational or communicative dissimilarities that brings about changes in the structure of the speech acts.
Mann ( 2009) conducted a study on the application of speech acts theory to 2 Samuel 15.23-16.14.The study targeted towards exploring the role of speech act theory in the study of how words do things in real life from the biblical narrative.It was discovered that the theory can contribute to an understanding of the performative nature of words as regard to biblical narrative.To achieve the result an analysis of the characters' speech acts was analysed as real speech acts using the categories presentence by John Searle to see how they function within the story.Secondly, Mann (2009) took an account of the reality that these speech acts are dependent on context and studied the way they create a literary world that consists of perlocutionary acts intended to affect a presumed audience.Mann (2009) shed some light on the literal perception of the narratives of religious citation as part of speech acts.Similarly, the data from the speech acts of reconciliatory aspect in the present study will be full of citation from the hadiths and the Holy Qur'an.
A study by Bertram (2002) explored the conversational roles and social functions of code-switching among Igbo bilinguals.The researcher was also a participant during the data collection and in others he merely eavesdropped.Participant's samples were tape recorded in the researchers' office without their knowledge.The sample size was three (3) Igbo native speakers and all undergraduates in the University of Benin were involved.In the study a probability samples used drawn from urban and other rural areas of Igbo communities.The sample has covered different professional and educational backgrounds including the socio-economic status of the participants.The data was sampled and collected from tape-recorded and reconstructed conversation of unspecified number of Igbo-English bilinguals over the years.Formal and informal settings were used along with concealed pocket recorder.The findings in (Bertram, 2002) may be considered questionable due to the researcher's unethical practice of data collection without the participants' consent.
The discussion of the reviewed studies in this section will be on the related studies on pragmatics and politeness strategies.Blattner and Fiori (2013) conducted an investigation of the language learners' development in sociopragmatic awareness and multiliteracy skills.The focus was on the virtual social network communities.Blattner and Fiori (2013) attempted to discover whether facebook as one of the social networking community (SNC) website can be exploited in the context of an intermediate language class in promoting competent, literate L2 learners.Certain pragmatic items such as greetings, leave-takings and vocabulary selection were linguistically analysed in the study in their attempt to identify the typical language use in the electronic setting.Thirteen enrolled undergraduate students of intermediate-level Spanish culture course were used as the participants.The selection criterion was typically based on their enrolment due to their grammatical competency in comprehending a variety of written texts.The results suggested that over a semester period, students improved on and discovered socio-pragmatic elements in this avenue and those observation-based awareness-raising tasks are actually helpful for the improvement of socio-pragmatic competence.
Another study which focused on socio-pragmatic analysis was done by Agbedo, Krisagbedo and Buluan (2013).They examined Boko Haram's language of insurgency and its socio-pragmatic implications in the Nigerian and global social contexts.The study strived to describe the communicative nature of the language of insurgency and highlight its socio-pragmatic meanings as shown in the speech acts of the sect's spokesmen.The periodic statements of Abu Qaqa and Abubakar Shekau (Boko Haram's spokesman and spiritual leader as well) was subjected to the three-level analysis specified by Austin's speech acts theory i.e. locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts.The findings indicated that there is a consistent use of judiciously selected words that invokes a frightening sense of apocalypse, which is sure to occur in Nigeria if the sect's demands are not fulfilled.The result also shown that, the perlocutionary act has installed a sense of neglect and fear in the minds of Nigerians on one hand and apparent helplessness of the administrative governance on the other.
On the contrary, Watson (2012) examined the pragmatic acts of love focusing on how early American female artists communicate love to their audience in blues music.The study built on the earlier works of Kuhn (1999) and Watson (2006).Kuhn (1999) studied the seductive strategies employed in the lyrics of male blues singers by application of speech acts theory in the corpus while Watson (2006) adopted the revised edition of Tyrmil's (2004) model in investigating the expression of love and sexuality of the lyrics of female blues singers of pre-1950s America.To a greater extend in complementing the study of Kuhn (1999), Watson (2012) examined many acts of love and seductive strategies expressed in the song's lyrics of the female blues artists.The result shows that, female artist are less rude and not much assertive in requesting their needs, and they are more polite in expressing their desires and feelings.The perception of Watson (2006) has proven otherwise.Based on his findings, the female artists are more direct in expressing their desires, be it love or otherwise.There are no reservations on expressing those desires.This is why, Watson (2012) extended his investigation of the manner at which womankind state their wants and necessities through the application of Searle (1969Searle ( , 1975Searle ( , 1979) ) speech act theory.Particular attention was specifically paid to commissives, directives and assertives to the early female blues singers' lyrics.In the methodology, a computerised corpus of 111 songs from 39 various American female blues artists were selected and analysed with the intention of proposing a pragmatic taxonomy of the lyrics.Obeng's (1999) study focused on the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic perspectives of Akan native court judicial discourse.The data was collected from the record of eighteen different court proceedings in Asuom and Kumasi of Ghana in the West African continent between 1992 and 1995.Obeng (1999) examined a series of items such as the structural linguistic resources utilised by the akyeame and the litigants to express authority or the lack of it, the social background or institutional roles of the discourse participants and how that influences their choice of various structural resources.Brown and Levinson (1987) Politeness theory as adopted in Nwoye (1992) and Obeng (1999) was employed in the pragmalinguistic analysis of the texts in order to explore the numerous lexical items, syntactic expressions, as well as indirectness devices such as idioms being in used to mark the power and politeness.The study also explored how sociolinguistic variables such as gender, age and institutional role influence language use most particularly, the relevancy of social identity which commands the different speech acts and forms as the discursive strategies of Akan politeness phenomena.
It was discovered that cultural values have remarkable impact on power and politeness in Akan judicial proceedings.Other findings showed that court officials and plaintiffs use particular content and functional words, idioms and other implicit expressions, as well as phonetic resources like mezzoforte and pianissimo loudness to express power, politeness and a range of attitudes and relationships such as distancing, anger, closeness, and politeness phenomena.Furthermore, the study shows that some judicial communication strategies used by the interactional participants to show power in the native courts, could also be discover in normal Akan conversation.Relying on the findings Obeng (1999) argued that there is a close relationship between power and politeness.Therefore he made a conclusion that politeness in Akan is guided by an ethnopragmatic context within which persons, social groups, and the entire Akan ethnic group can be situated and additionally, linguistics, culture, discourse context and speaker intentions play an important role in displaying the close link between the language, power and politeness.Since the interlocutors in the judicial discourse commonly use speech patterns consistent with their institutional role be it social status, age or gender.
In a similar vein, Agyekum (2008) discusses the pragmatic of Akan greetings where he explored the functions, situations, and the most important functions of greetings such as creation of social relationship, the obligation of one another in social meetings and the demonstration of an individual's communicative competence.The study also explored the nomenclature of Akan greetings in terms of periods, formality, events and activities and the new trend in greetings in the Akan contemporary society.An ethnographic methodology tool was employed in the attempt to discover how greetings as a socio-cultural linguistic routine operate among the Akan of Ghana and whether Akan greetings are similar to other societies or are unique.In the process of data collection both the ethno-pragmatics and ethnosemantics used, participant observation, interviews and introspection was used in Akan greetings.The data was collected at different time from the local negotiation at the Manhayia palace in 1994.Audiotapes were used for the recording of the proceedings and the transcription.The study used speech act theory, politeness and ethnography of communication as framework within the anthropological linguistics.
The study discovered that the nomenclature of Akan greetings has revealed that circumstances, activities and people have their suitable greetings and responses.Once the greeting or response is wrongly applied, he or she fails the impact.Akan greetings are employed to indexicalise social parameters among interlocutors.The result also revealed that the way a person is greeted and how he/she responds are significant indexes of the age, sex, social status, power, kinship and clan organisation and occupations of the persons involved in the meeting.Agyekum (2008) further established that the structure of the greetings in Akan aids to categorise the formality or informality i.e. equality or inequality of the speakers.The variation in the use of language by interactors determines the cultural manifestation and precondition for acknowledging social variables.That is why, Agyekum (2008) claimed that Akan greetings are employed to strengthen the politeness and the social bonds between speakers and it reduces the anxiety and suspicion in social contact.It was also reported that Akan greetings have procedures and purposes and interactants used many practicable verbal and non-verbal strategies to attain their goals.The length and procedure of greetings could depend on the context, setting and interactants.The greetings could be complex and simple, formal and informal which are predictable.
A study by Zhan (1999) on the other hand, examined the Chinese self-deprecation phenomenon from the sociopragmatic perspectives.In the study the focus was on the analysis of the ritual and pragmatic implications arising from the facework intended to achieve the face needs of the interactants in communicative events.The study contributes to the understanding that self-deprecation is the act of ritual or purposeful disapproving of one's own prestige, attainments, or ability in order to accomplish desired contextual effects via written or oral forms of communication.Zhan (1999) further claimed to have filled the missing puzzles of other studies on pragmatics and social interaction, for they concentrates exclusively on either the normative or instrumental functions of self-deprecation, proclaiming that these two lines of analysis cannot be separated from one another if the social, cultural and historical contexts are considered.According to him self-deprecation is best considered as a construct responsive to social sanctions, psychological needs, and communicative goals.Therefore, he proposed an alternative interpretation of the universal model of face which could be more compatible with the language-and culture-specific characteristics of Chinese.
Thagard, Hilsmier and Easterbrooks (2011) conducted a study on pragmatic language in deaf and hard of hearing students with relationship with achievement in general education.An investigation was conducted on the correlation between socio-linguistic and pragmatic abilities of 81 deaf and hard of hearing students whose level of hearing abilities loss, as well as communication mode and the level of success in their educational outcome.The study was conducted at the school district in the south-eastern U.S. state where two measurements were used, the state department of education as a device in one hand, and the developed one from the local school system on the other hand, that is, Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (Georgia Department of Education, 2000) and the Socio-Pragmatic Skills Checklist for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students (Cobb County School District, 1997).The result revealed that there are difficulties and delays in pragmatic performance because of the inadequate experience to common per diem discourse and fundamental failure in all components of language improvement.Therefore they conclude that the sociopragmatic language of students had a high, positive relationship with academic outcomes irrespective of how it is used whether spoken language or signed language.

Research Methodology and Theory
This study has employed a qualitative ethnographic design in conducting research on sociopragmatic aspect of Code Switching and Code Mixing (CSCM) during RCP in Bauchi State Shariah Commission.According to Creswell (2012:161), the literal meaning of 'ethnography' is "Writing about groups of people".Through the use of ethnographic qualitative design, group of people can be identified and studied in their domains.The central goal of ethnographic research on speech act performance and social rules of speaking are to characterise the sociolinguistic norms of a 'speech community' (Hymes, 1972(Hymes, , 1972b;;Wolfson, 1983;Daikuhara, 1986).It is therefore; most likely that the whole characteristics of ethnographic methods are to interpret texts against the background of cultural structures or to use texts to reconstruct those cultural structures (Titscer, et al., 2002).Watson-Gegeo and Ulichny (1988) further positioned that ethnographic analysis is capable of explaining and interpreting both behaviour and the context to which the behaviour transpired.The context, according to Watson-Gegeo and Ulichny (1988), refers to the instantaneous situations to which an activity, events or interaction take place.This permits us in the description and holistic explanation of the participants' expressive CSCM acts' behaviour with adequate information as identified during RCP.

Data for this study were collected between January and March, 2016 in Bauchi State Shariah Commission (BSSC) of the North-Eastern part of Nigeria (West Africa).
The data were collected from a series of in-depth audiovisual recordings and observations of 12 different shariah court's reconciliation case proceedings as unit of analysis.The collection of the data was purposefully done through snowball strategy in selecting cases due to the various numbers of cases of different nature being carried out daily within the shariah commission.The selection and collection of the data was successful with the aid and recommendation of both the BSSC permanent sectary and Hisbah State Director (Creswell 2012;Keyton 2015).The court officials and parties to cases were informed and consented before the commencement of the data collection.The data was analysed strictly base on family disputes (FD) and Family Disputes Marital Issues (FDMI).
The data was triangulated and transcribed.The transcription of the data was conducted and subsequently reviewed by experts and obtained authentication of its validity and reliability as recommended by Patton (1990) and Creswell (2012).Then we employed the strategies suggested by certain scholars including Boyatzis (1998), Braun, Clark (2006) and Creswell (2012) leading to tour familiarisation with the transcribed data.Then through the use of qualitative analysis QSR Nvivo data management software, we coded the data, generated themes and created models and subsequently interpreted.The general features of the cases used as unit for analysis consist of matters relating to mismanagement of trust, child abuse, immorality, divorce, abuse of marital obligations and others.These mostly occur among or between blood relations, parents-children and couples.The total samples of the participants were 72, while the overall duration of the whole analysed case proceedings was 5 hours, 35 minutes and 15 seconds.
The coding category being generated from the data are as follows: FD stands for family dispute and FDMI for family dispute marital issues.On the other hand, the coding pattern for the court officials takes the features as in the following: Arb represent arbitrator, Sec means sectary, and CLRC refers to Islamic cleric while WH represent ward head.Regarding the parties involved in disputes they were coded in accordance to their role during the RCP and these include: FC stands for Female Complainant, MC means Male Complainant, MR represent Male Respondent, FG for Female Guardian, FREP stands for Female Representative, WFC for Witness to Female Respondent while ST.M refers to Step mother to Female respondents respectively.
The study is guided by Searle (1969) and Kreidler (1998) taxonomy of speech acts (Expressive act of CSCM utterances).Directives are the speakers' utterances made in the attempt to get the hearer to do something for him, such as: commands, requests, challenges, invitations, entreaties, dares.the expression of these directives are in many forms, which include question or command form depending on the form the speaker intended to get the addressee to carry out an action.Examples: "would you mind passing the salt?" or "pass the salt".In either of these instances, the hearer is required to pass the salt to the speaker.I.e to say the speaker directed the hearer to do something for him (Searle 1969).This study focused on the illocutionary acts of request as form of directives utterances.
To sum up, in ethnographic methodology, data collection is systematic and the target population are well defined.We dealt with the participants based on their ethnolinguistic status, interpersonal relationship, and ethnic group among others social characteristics which are also in line with Wolfson (1983).Despite the different social background of the participants we unified the analysis of this study on the use of expressive acts of CSCM in relation to their ethnolinguistic paradigm within the RCP of Bauchi State shariah Commission of Nigeria.

Findings and Discussion
This section provides findings on CSCM as a sub-type of Expressive SA in RCP.The illocutionary act of CSCM is viewed as the speaker's linguistics behaviours and practice of using more than single code/speech act variety during interaction.In RCP speakers alter or mix more than one code/s and other linguistics elements with the aim of contextualising their intention in accordance to sharia.Switching of codes can obviously viewed as part of a linguistics behaviour belonging to what can be simply identified as more than one code or speech variety.Koike (1987) and Skiba (1997) are of the view that code, or language switching takes place when a speaker who happens to be a bilingual alternates between two or more languages at the time of his/her conversation with another speaker with similar competency.Switching of codes is mostly considered as a linguistic advantage of the user.Banjo (1996) is of the view that CSCM contain elements of at least two languages in a communicative process.In fact, these terms are common characteristics of the language of various circumstances in a multilingual nation as Nigeria.The CSCM can be seen as makers of some sorts of familiarisation as well as a kind of distancing manoeuvre that prevail the context surrounding the use as a defining factor.Examples of excerpts are presented based on general patterns of CSCM as appeared in the data.
Similar to Banjo (1996), we found CSCM as one of the most unigue findings in RCP.It is a sociopragmatic culture, behaviour and atribute of Hausa speakers, most especially in RCP to use Hausa switched, lexical mixed of Hausa-English or Hausa-Arabic CSCM as Expressive utterances SA.Most at times the CSCM of Arabic terminologies and Hausanised of Arabic lexicals is also utilised by the speakers to affirm, assert reciprocity among others.in terms of expressivenes of using CSCM, the findings support and confirmed the assertion of Kreidler (1998) and Searle (1969Searle ( & 1979) ) theoretical framework suggestiing expressive utterances are employed by speakers to address issues of various effect.
In order to seek permission or make a vow and sometimes with the aid of quotation, court officials' code switched from Hausa to Arabic is utilised by speakers as in following excerpts: [FDMI-Cleric.C7: ITT 107] "Salamu alaikum"!-Peace be unto you! ] "Wallahi" -I swear by Allah.

2) Hausa-English lexical mixed
Court officials and parties to a case mixed Hausa and English lexical in their expressive act of RCP with the aim of expressing intention or gratitude, request, show respect, assert reciprocity or affirmation and sometimes offer defence for the action of others or to minimise imposition as in the following excerpts: [FDMI-Arb.C7: ITT 40(3)] "…ba'a dogaro da scanning."it'sdoesn't relied on scanning.

3) Hausa-Arabic lexical mixed
On the other hand, the findings shows the speakers (Court officials and parties) also code mixed Hausa and Arabic in their expressive utterances when responding during RCP….with the aim of expressing intention or gratitude, request, show respect, assert reciprocity or affirmation and sometimes make a vow to assure the addressee/s about the state of thing as in the following excerpts: [FDMI-Arb.C7: ITT 52(2)] To in kaje ka kaiwa sharia, sharia zatace ita bata yadda da wannan ba".-So if you take it to law, the law will say it doesn't accept this.

4) Arabic terminologies and Hausanised Arabic lexical
The use of domestication of Arabic terms into Hausa is also an obvious sociopragmatic feature of speakers in RCP.Most at times the CSCM of Arabic terminologies and Hausanised of Arabic lexicals is also utilised by the speakers to affirm, assert reciprocity among others.this can clearly shown in the following excerpts: [FDMI-Arb.C12: ITT 108(1)] "lalle jarabawane!" -surely it is a trial![FDMI-Arb.C12: ITT 171(5)] "Kowa ya sanshi, ya sanshi da hakiya irin ta addinine."-knows him with humility of religion.[ITT 171(6)] "Kai a duniya me kake nema?" -you, in this world what are you seeking for?[FDMI-Arb.C4: ITT 349] "So wata kila irin wannan jarabawan Allah ya jarabeki dashi.-maybe Allah has tested you with such kinds of tests.
[FDMI-Arb.C4: ITT 301] "in wannan shine in your mind, don Allah kar ka bata mana lokaci, wajen wahalar damu cewa muzo mu sake sa rana muzo mu zauna."-if this is in your mind then please for Allah sake do not waste our time of fixing another time to come and sit.
From these findings, it is identified that several words of Arabic origin such as Allah, Dunya, Shetan, Din, Jarraba, iftila'I among others are domesticated and utilised by speakers in RCP to the extent that they can be considered as part of the Hausa lexical, hence, viewed as sociopragmatic practice and feature of Hausa SA common to RCP.
With the use of Nvivo analysis software, the illocutionary act of CSCM is identified as a common feature of Speech Act (SA) employed by speakers across the data used from RCP.As shown in Figure 1.1 (p.16) and Table 1.1 (p.16), this sort of speech act is utilised by almost all classes of speakers during RCP.CSCM utterances are found in the 12 RCP being utilised as unit of analysis for this study with 47 Sources and 257 interactive turn-takings (ITT).Court officials are the most common users of this kind of Expressive SA with 21 sources 11 of whom were Arbitrators.Both female and male speakers from the parties involved in the RCP uses CSCM with 6 female complainants, 1 male complainant, and 8 male respondents.
In terms of individual participants, as shown in Table 1.1 (P.16) the result shows FDMI-Arb.C4 as the most common user of CSCM utterances with 31 ITT (12.06%),followed by FDMI-Arb.C11 with 20 ITT (7.78%), while FDMI-GREP.C12 is marked with moderate number of usage at 14 ITT (5.45%) which is followed by FDMI-Arb.C6 and FDMI-Arb.C7 both with similar findings at 12 ITT (4.67%).On the other hand, 11 participants were identified with the least usage of CSCM who consist of Arbitrator, Islamic Cleric, sectary, female complainants, guardians, and male respondents at 1 ITT (0.39%).This implies that the act of CSCM is not a mandatory kind of expressive act of speech in RCP.However, it is a cultural practice by parties involved in disputes to express gratitude and to also exchange pleasantries with the court officials.From the excerpts across the results above, the findings in the sociopragmatic discourse of RCP, CSCM also proliferate and these can be noticed in the conversational turns of both the parties in disputes and the court officials.In support of some studies like Alo and Soneye (2014), It should be understood that while code-switching of single words utterances and phrases from Hausa to either Arabic or English language occurs intersentential, the lexical mixing of the codes from Hausa with any of English or Arabic take position within the expressive sentence.Hence, the results from this study, we identified and explained CSCM were used to achieve various means including requests, express intention, gratitude, show respects, affirmation, and mild imposition among others.To this end, we conclude that the achievement of these means may suggest their multilingual competence in both the three languages and it ensures the possible and easy grasp of the major registers needful in the RCP context by the participants.
In addition, the CSCM expressive acts as well as the use of Arabic terms and Hausanization of the Arabic lexical in RCP could be the consequence of the multilingual situation in Nigeria, where English is considered as official language of communication and administration while Arabic is the language of religious activities for the Muslim faithful as opined in many studies (Banjo, 1996;Bertram, 2002;Medubi, 2010;Alo & Soneye, 2014).These are also considered ethnolinguistic and the markers of communicative competence within the RCP communicative event among both the court officials being speakers with high level of education and competent bilinguals in both the three languages (Hausa, Arabic and English) and the parties in disputes with their witnesses and guardians as opined in the view of some scholars like Hymes (1972) Alo and Soneye (2014).

Conclusion and Implication
With view of the results in this study, the finding suggest that the expressive act of CSCM is a unique attribute of RCP and dominantly utilised by almost all class of speakers although the court officials were the most common users in the attempt to prove a point or minimise imposition and express gratitude among others.Moreover, with the use of CSCM, the speakers in RCP show their multilingual competence in both the three languages (Hausa, Arabic and English).The use of several words of Arabic origin such as Allah, Dunya, Shetan, Din, Jarraba, iftila'I among others as domesticated and utilised by speakers during the RCP is part of the sociopragmatic practice and feature of Hausa Speech Acts common to RCP.
By implication, Islamic legalists and linguists ought to expose themselves more and lots more on exploring the different kind of speech acts used in RCP due to its importance and the persuasive strategies involved in achieving peaceful resolution of disputing issues.In accordance with the obvious findings presented and discussed, the study have provided among others better insight and description about the role language play in RCP with particular to expressive act of CSCM.The study equally highlights the sociopragmatic impact of Hausa, Arabic and English languages in shariah-based dispute resolution process within Nigerian of West African continent.
In fact, we recommend that other aspects of sociopragmatic speech acts of RCP should be explore by both interested researchers, the shariah commission stake holders, Islamic juries, legal practitioners, policy makers in law and jurisprudence (e.g., both national and state legislatures) to enhance the quality proceedings process of the shariabased RCP not only in Nigeria but across the globe for Muslims and those interested to be tried under Islamic legal system.

Figure 1 . 1
Figure 1.1 Sources Model on Code Switchings and Code Mixings as reflection of participants' state of mind in depicting Truth value prepositionThis implies that the act of CSCM is not a mandatory kind of expressive act of speech in RCP.However, it is a cultural practice by parties involved in disputes to express gratitude and to also exchange pleasantries with the court officials.
Our findings suggest CSCM as a sociopragmatic culture, behaviour and atribute of Hausa natives, most especially in RCP.It furhter described that the use of Hausa switched, lexical mixed of Hausa-English or Hausa-Arabic, Arabic terminologies and Hausanised of Arabic lexicals CSCM Expressive utterances of SA as playing a significant role in the speakers expressive acts during RCP due to their Islamic faith affiliation and possible compentency in English langaue.In fact, this can be related with the argument ofMedubi (2010:40)  who stated that "perception in Hausaland are motivated by obedience to the tenets of the religion which permeates nearly all facets of existence."Hence, "Hausaland need to be understood within the framework of he dominant religion, Islam, which provides the cultural purview" [P.35].

Table 1 :
Sources and interactional categories of turn-taking of Code Switching and