Essays On Language Communication And Literature In Africa

Essays on Language, Communication and Literature in Africa explores language choice questions, together with domain-driven lingua-communicative and literary resources situated within the discourses of law, culture, medicine, visual art, politics, the media, music and literature in Africa. It identifies the distinctive African paraphernalia of these discourses, and foregrounds their real-world and mediated cultural and societal values, and highlights the Western presence through the inclusion of aspects of Shakespearean perspectives which bear universal tidings and speak to the African gender tradition. The chapters’ attention to verbal and visual artistic communicative mechanisms underlines such engagements as multilingualism policies, socio-political declension, social dynamism and cultural interventions that characterise the African setting. These realities are discussed in impressive detail, authoritative scholastic depth and effective stylistic tones that reflect the authors’ familiarity with the facets of African societies deducible from language, communication and literature.

Essay from the year 2001 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: B, University of London (Faculty of English Literature), course: Literature in History: Race and Subjectivity in South African Writing, language: English, abstract: ‘The choice of language and the use to which language is put is central to a people’s definition of themselves in relation to their natural and social environment, indeed in relation to the entire universe.’1 This quote by the Kenyan writer Ngugi expresses the exceedingly important relationship between language and the individual in general. This relationship is gaining even more importance for a continent such as Africa, in which large parts of the native population were oppressed by European colonial powers for centuries. One important instrument of oppression was definitely language and the feeling of European superiority resulting out of cultural traditions, such as literature. In South Africa, where two major colonial powers were fighting for supremacy and many different native ethnic groups were combined in one state, the question of language would almost naturally provoke conflicts and crisis. In this essay, I should like to have a closer look at this delicate relationship between language and power in South African literature with the example of a Black and a White African writer, Sol T. Plaatje and Nadine Gordimer. In his historical overview, Leonard Thompson already describes the South Africa of the 18th century as a ‘linguistic Babel’2. Afrikaans, a simplified form of Dutch and at first only used in oral communication, would gradually develop into the lingua franca of South Africa. Today, its greatest competitor among European languages is English and both languages, together with nine African languages, belong to the eleven official languages of the postapartheid South African State. The right of every South African to use the language of his or her choice is now embedded in the constitution. However, the situation of having eleven official languages is truly unique world-wide. One of the most pressing question is whether there is a necessity to agree on a single language as the official one, with the other ten languages receiving an equally high status, in order to support the current process of nation-building? If so, should it be English, Afrikaans or one of the African languages? [...] 1 Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Decolonising the Mind, page 4

This book is the first to offer an interdisciplinary and comprehensive reference work on the often-marginalised languages of southern Africa. The authors analyse a range of different concepts and questions, including language and sociality, social and political history, multilingual government, and educational policies. In doing so, they present significant original research, ensuring that the work will remain a key reference point for the subject. This ambitious and wide-ranging edited collection will appeal to students and scholars of southern African languages, sociolinguistics, history and politics.

This volume presents papers on issues in African linguistics, covering a variety of African languages and ranging from phonology to lexicology.

This two-volume work speaks to the entire scope of Professor Odebunmi’s research concerns in general pragmatics, medical and clinical pragmatics, literary discourse, critical discourse analysis, applied linguistics and language sociology. Its 52 chapters across both volumes (24 chapters in this volume and 28 chapters in Volume 2) written by established scholars such as Jacob Mey, Paul Hopper, Joyce Mathangwane, and Ming-Yu Tseng, in addition to the honoree, explore the dynamics of the interplay of spatial, temporal, agential and (non-)institutional factors that drive discourse/textual constructions, negotiations and interpretations and sometimes influence human cognition and actions. The volume will appeal to all academics, researchers and students who are interested in the interface of context and meaning in human communication.

This text is devoted to studies of the languages and cultures of the Cushitic-speaking peoples of the Horn of Africa. It is concerned with linguistics in a technical sense, and analyzes the oral literature of the people of the area.