Crossing Linguistic Borders In Postcolonial Anglophone Africa

The papers collected in this volume discuss applied, pedagogical and ideological issues related to language use in selected countries in post-colonial Anglophone Africa. The collection represents new voices in linguistics from Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, and is structured in four sections, covering the following themes: • languages in contact • language identity, ideology and policy • communication and issues of intelligibility • language in education The volume discusses the linguistic paradoxes and complexities that have emerged from the contact between English, (and/or) French and indigenous African languages. Some of the papers collected here discuss the characteristics, functions and peculiarities of the emerging varieties of languages that have developed in these post-colonial African States. Furthermore, the book offers empirical data on up-to-date research drawn from the expertise of budding and established scholars in the areas under discussion, and demonstrates the rich body of research that is developing in post-colonial Africa. Some of the areas covered in this volume include the linguistic products of bilingualism in Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, and new linguistic and sociocultural borders of Cameroonian Pidgin-Creole, which bridge the ideological gap between English and French speaking communities in Cameroon, unofficial language policy and language planning in the country and discourse choices in Cameroonian English. This book is an ideal resource for graduate students and researchers interested in the areas of sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, discourse analysis and World Englishes.

Almost all low- and middle-income postcolonial countries now use English or another dominant language as the medium of instruction for some, if not all, of the basic education cycle. Much of the literature about language-in-education in such countries has focused on the instrumentalist value of English, on one side, and the rights of learners to high quality mother tongue-based education, on the other. The polarised nature of the debate has tended to leave issues related to the processes of learning in English as a Medium Instruction (EMI) classrooms under-researched. This book aims to provide a greater understanding of the existing challenges for learners and educators and potential strategies that can support more effective teaching and learning in EMI classrooms. Contributions illustrate the impact that learning in English has on learners in a range of regional, national and local contexts and put forward theoretical and empirical analyses to support more relevant and inclusive educational policies. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Comparative Education.

Informed by a global space animated by various conflicts, this book brings a refreshing perspective on how the disciplines of literature and language engage this phenomenon. In its shift from a purely political interrogation of conflict, the volume provides a broad analytic canvas on which human behaviour in such contexts can be examined. This is an ultimate invitation to a re-visioning of socio-cultural parameters of identity construction, borders, natural resources, religion, cultural values, beliefs, governance, ideology, and globalisation. The book’s varied perspective, animated by a rich diversity of literary and linguistic approaches, gives it an interdisciplinary emphasis that will appeal to readers across disciplines. Its ultimate message is that conflict is not subject-bound. The liberal analysis of different aspects makes the volume an invaluable asset not only to literature and language scholars but also to everyone with inclinations towards conflict creation and management.

In spite of the fact that World Englishes theorizing projects a monolithic picture of English in Cameroon by focusing mostly on Cameroon Anglophone English (generally called Cameroon English), this book argues, with empirical evidence, that Cameroon harbours different world Englishes that display different realities and different describable aspects and trends, a complicated sociolinguistic scenario that challenges nation-based World Englishes paradigms. The book will be indispensable for different stakeholders, including scholars of World Englishes, general linguists, sociolinguists, creolists, phonologists, syntacticians, pedagogues, and students. In addition to describing the sociolinguistic and typological hallmarks of the different world Englishes that hold sway in Cameroon and highlighting their variety-specific peculiarities, the book further evaluates the plausibility and applicability of nation-based World Englishes paradigms in Cameroon, a country whose complex sociolinguistic landscape is comparable only to that of South Africa.

This volume underlines the relevance of an empirical, data-based and scientifically informed approach to the teaching of a second or foreign language, even though the contributions gathered here carry out this task through very different means and with various theoretical underpinnings. This is evident especially in the different and versatile perspectives on academic issues in the linguistic and methodological sections of the volume. The contributions here are assembled according to their disciplinary categories of linguistics, methodology of teaching English, and cultural and literary studies.

This Element explores the politics of literary translation via case studies from the Heinemann African Writers Series and the work of twenty-first-century literary translators in Cameroon. It intervenes in debates concerning multilingualism, race and decolonization, as well as methodological discussion in African literary studies, world literature, comparative literature and translation studies. The task of translating African literary texts has developed according to political and socio-economic contexts. It has contributed to the consecration of a canon of African classics and fuelled polemics around African languages. Yet retranslation remains rare and early translations are frequently criticised. This Element's primary focus on the labour rather than craft or art of translation emphasises the material basis that underpins who gets to translate and how that embodied labour occurs within the process of book production and reception. The arguments draw on close readings, fresh archival material, interviews, and co-production and observation of literary translation workshops.

This volume represents a comprehensive description of the structure of Cameroonian Pidgin, including an overview of its socio-cultural context, writing system, sounds, word formation, word classes and sentence structures. It comprises a corpus of 540 Cameroonian Pidgin proverbs and a rich glossary of over 1000 words and expressions typical of Cameroonian Pidgin which are helpful in understanding the characteristic features of the language, as well as the cultural, the social, and the philosophical contexts of the Cameroonian Pidgin speaker. Written with the first-hand experience of a “native speaker”, it will be of interest to ordinary users, as well as students, researchers and professional linguists interested in the way the language functions. Indeed, it represents a useful resource for anyone wishing to learn or know about Pidgin, especially tourists and professionals traveling to West and Central Africa.