This paper titled “effects of non-linguistic factors in the standardisation of Tiv orthography” is an evaluative research to examine the impacts of non-linguistic factors in standardising the orthography of Tiv language. The motivation of the paper is based on the fact that scholars have worked on Tiv orthography but have not exhaustively treated the effects of non-linguistic factors in the light of its standardisation. It aims to explore the effects of non-linguistic factors on the Tiv orthography and examine the extent of the effects on its standardisation. The paper employs a qualitative research approach, which includes the descriptive method. It adopts the survey design; through the use of unstructured interview, it focuses on a small select population of informed people for data collection. In effect, the study anchors on the Corpus Planning Theory by Cooper.

The findings reveal that standardisation of Tiv language orthography has currently not gained recognition because of lack of ethno-linguistic patriotism, Tiv native speaker’s attitudes towards their language, rivalry among Tiv linguists and some Tiv language enthusiasts. Consequently, there is no codification and acceptability of any of the proposed versions of the language’s orthography. The paper thus concludes that the non-linguistic factors are more ostentatious than the linguistic and as such, should be handled with utmost caution. The research therefore recommends that Tiv language scholars should be ready to yield to changes and innovations arising as a result of some orthographic reforms where individuals should be aware of the dynamism of language which changes with time