CALABAR LESBIAN CRYPTIC LANGUAGES

Africa does not guarantee the freedom of transgender people, still, this practice is spread-ing across regions, traditional cults and cultures within the continent (Kwame & Aderin-to, 2009, p. 125). This sexual revolution is acknowledged as clandestine. It is also viewed more than ever in Nigeria and some sub-Saharan African countries as being against African humanness, (Onuah, 2014). In this paper, we focus on the use of this sociolect among lesbians in Calabar which was conceived out of the societal strict pressure–seeking conformity to the cultural and traditional norms through symbolic violence, expel-ling lesbians from school. To this effect, twenty female students who attended female single public schools were interviewed. This is in order to find out the prevalence of the language’s use, how messages are encoded using this language form, as well as how the language can easily be decoded. The sociolect is also interpreted to English using the codes invented and utilized by this lesbian community, with the help of the informants, and the support of semiotic and linguistic cryptanalysis