This text offers a critical examination of aspects of the politics of the role of English in Africa and its Diaspora. It looks at its changed location in the post-Cold War era and the challenges it poses to the enduring quest for intellectual liberation, pan-Africanism and Afrocentricity. The study also explores the spaces and possibilities for appropriating the language towards a counter-hegemonic African-centred agenda under the present global order.
Introducing the subject of English in Africa, this book examines the usage of English in education and in African literature. The range of language forms and the attitudes towards English are discussed. The author considers the influence of English on African languages.
Teaching English in Africa is a practical guide written for primary and secondary school teachers working all over the continent. This book relates the practice of English language teaching directly to the African context. As well as covering the underlying theory of how children learn languages and how teachers can best facilitate this learning, it also provides practical resources and ideas for activities and techniques that have proved successful in English classrooms in Africa, both at primary and secondary level. It is intended to be a practical guide, so references and citations are kept to a minimum and concepts are presented using examples that are likely to be familiar to most teachers working in Africa. If there is a bias in this book, it is towards the needs of teachers working in low-resource, isolated contexts in Africa, as these teachers are so often neglected by literature on teaching methodology.
This book focuses on the sociolinguistics of English in relation to globalisation. The pattern of migration and linguistic flows that have become more prominent in this century seem to teach us one major lesson: that we need a sociolinguistics that places less emphasis on territorialisation of English but accounts for the complex situations, patterns of mobility of people and challenges that have come with globalisation. This book addresses the spread of English through hip-hop to other parts of the world and how other varieties of English around the world especially African American Vernacular English and Jamaican English have influenced Nigerian English through this genre of music.
Ufrieda Ho’s compelling memoir describes with intimate detail what it was like to come of age in the marginalized Chinese community of Johannesburg during the apartheid era of the 1970s and 1980s. The Chinese were mostly ignored, as Ho describes it, relegated to certain neighborhoods and certain jobs, living in a kind of gray zone between the blacks and the whites. As long as they adhered to these rules, they were left alone. Ho describes the separate journeys her parents took before they knew one another, each leaving China and Hong Kong around the early 1960s, arriving in South Africa as illegal immigrants. Her father eventually became a so-called “fahfee man,” running a small-time numbers game in the black townships, one of the few opportunities available to him at that time. In loving detail, Ho describes her father’s work habits: the often mysterious selection of numbers at the kitchen table, the carefully-kept account ledgers, and especially the daily drives into the townships, where he conducted business on street corners from the seat of his car. Sometimes Ufrieda accompanied him on these township visits, offering her an illuminating perspective into a stratified society. Poignantly, it was on such a visit that her father—who is very much a central figure in Ho’s memoir—met with a tragic end. In many ways, life for the Chinese in South Africa was self-contained. Working hard, minding the rules, and avoiding confrontations, they were able to follow traditional Chinese ways. But for Ufrieda, who was born in South Africa, influences from the surrounding culture crept into her life, as did a political awakening. Paper Sons and Daughters is a wonderfully told family history that will resonate with anyone having an interest in the experiences of Chinese immigrants, or perhaps any immigrants, the world over.
In Out of Africa, author Isak Dinesen takes a wistful and nostalgic look back on her years living in Africa on a Kenyan coffee plantation. Recalling the lives of friends and neighbours—both African and European—Dinesen provides a first-hand perspective of colonial Africa. Through her obvious love of both the landscape and her time in Africa, Dinesen’s meditative writing style deeply reflects the themes of loss as her plantation fails and she returns to Europe. HarperTorch brings great works of non-fiction and the dramatic arts to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperTorch collection to build your digital library.
The plural form 'Englishes' conveys the diversity of English as a global language, pinpointing the growth and existence of a large number of national, regional and social forms. The global spread of English and the new varieties that have emerged around the world has grown to be a vast area of study and research, which intersects multiple disciplines. This Handbook provides a comprehensive and authoritative survey of World Englishes from 1600 to the present day. Covering topics such as variationist sociolinguistics, pragmatics, contact linguistics, linguistic anthropology, corpus- and applied linguistics and language history, it combines discussion of traditional topics with a variety of innovative approaches. The chapters, all written by internationally acclaimed authorities, provide up-to-date discussions of the evolution of different Englishes around the globe, a comprehensive coverage of different models and approaches, and some original perspectives on current challenges.
Grounded in ethnography, this monograph explores the ambiguity of English as a lingua franca by focusing on identity politics of language and race in contemporary South Africa. The book adopts a multidisciplinary approach which highlights how ways of speaking English constructs identities in a multilingual context. Focusing primarily on isiZulu and Afrikaans speakers, it raises critical questions around power and ideology. The study draws from literature on English as a lingua franca, raciolinguistics, and the cultural politics of English and dialogues between these fields. It challenges long-held concepts underpinning existing research from the global North by highlighting how they do not transfer and apply to identity politics of language in South Africa. It sketches out how these struggles for belonging are reflected in marginalisation and empowerment and a vast range of local, global and glocal identity trajectories. Ultimately, it offers a first lens through which global scholarship on English as a lingua franca can be decolonised in terms of disciplinary limitations, geopolitical orientations and a focus on the politics of race that characterize the use of English as a lingua franca all over the world. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, World Englishes, ELF and African studies.
A blistering, brutal novel of the South African frontier from a major new literary voice In the eighteenth century, a giant strides the border of the Cape Colony frontier. Coenraad de Buys is a legend, a polygamist, a swindler and a big talker; a rebel who fights with Xhosa chieftains against the Boers and British; the fierce patriarch of a sprawling mixed-race family with a veritable tribe of followers; a savage enemy and a loyal ally. Like the wild dogs who are always at his heels, he roams the shifting landscape of southern Africa, hungry and spoiling for a fight. Red Dog is a brilliant, fiercely powerful novel - a wild, epic tale of Africa in a time before boundaries between cultures and peoples were fixed, based on the life of a real historical figure.
