Rethinking Language Use in Digital Africa
Rethinking Language Use in Digital Africa

Author: Leketi Makalela

Publisher: Multilingual Matters

Published: 2021-06-23

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 1800412320

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This book challenges the view that digital communication in Africa is limited and relatively unsophisticated and questions the assumption that digital communication has a damaging effect on indigenous African languages. The book applies the principles of Digital African Multilingualism (DAM) in which there are no rigid boundaries between languages. The book charts a way forward for African languages where greater attention is paid to what speakers do with the languages rather than what the languages look like, and offers several models for language policy and planning based on horizontal and user-based multilingualism. The chapters demonstrate how digital communication is being used to form and sustain communication in many kinds of online groups, including for political activism and creating poetry, and offer a paradigm of language merging online that provides a practical blueprint for the decolonization of African languages through digital platforms.

An Introduction to African Languages
An Introduction to African Languages

Author: G. Tucker Childs

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2003-12-19

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 9027295883

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This book introduces beginning students and non-specialists to the diversity and richness of African languages. In addition to providing a solid background to the study of African languages, the book presents linguistic phenomena not found in European languages. A goal of this book is to stimulate interest in African languages and address the question: What makes African languages so fascinating? The orientation adopted throughout the book is a descriptive one, which seeks to characterize African languages in a relatively succinct and neutral manner, and to make the facts accessible to a wide variety of readers. The author’s lengthy acquaintance with the continent and field experiences in western, eastern, and southern Africa allow for both a broad perspective and considerable depth in selected areas. The original examples are often the author’s own but also come from other sources and languages not often referenced in the literature. This text also includes a set of sound files illustrating the phenomena under discussion, be they the clicks of Khoisan, talking drums, or the ideophones (words like English lickety-split) found almost everywhere, which will make this book a valuable resource for teacher and student alike.

Language in South Africa
Language in South Africa

Author: Rajend Mesthrie

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-10-17

Total Pages: 526

ISBN-13: 9780521791052

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A wide-ranging guide to language and society in South Africa. The book surveys the most important language groupings in the region in terms of wider socio-historical processes; contact between the different language varieties; language and public policy issues associated with post-apartheid society and its eleven official languages.

A History of African Linguistics
A History of African Linguistics

Author: H. Ekkehard Wolff

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-06-13

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1108417973

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The first global history of African linguistics as an emerging autonomous academic discipline, covering Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe.

Language in South Africa
Language in South Africa

Author: Victor N. Webb

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2002-01-01

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 9789027218490

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A discussion of the role which language, or, more properly, languages, can perform in the reconstruction and development of South Africa. The approach followed in this book is characterised by a numbers of features - its aim is to be factually based and theoretically informed.

Developmental and Clinical Pragmatics
Developmental and Clinical Pragmatics

Author: Klaus P. Schneider

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-08-24

Total Pages: 716

ISBN-13: 3110431130

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This handbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of a wide range of developmental and clinical issues in pragmatics. Principally, the contributions to this volume deal with pragmatic competence in a native language, in a second or foreign language, and in a selection of language disorders. The topics which are covered explore questions of production and comprehension on the utterance and discourse level. Topics addressed concern the acquisition and learning, teaching and testing, assessment and treatment of various aspects of pragmatic ability, knowledge and use. These include, for example, the acquisition and development of speech acts, implicatures, irony, story-telling and interactional competence. Phenomena such as pragmatic awareness and pragmatic transfer are also addressed. The disorders considered include clinical conditions pertaining to children and to adults. Specifically, these are, among others, autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome, and Alzheimer's disease.

Gender and Language in Sub-Saharan Africa
Gender and Language in Sub-Saharan Africa

Author: Lilian Lem Atanga

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2013-03-27

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 9027272301

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Gender and Language in Sub-Saharan Africa: Tradition, Struggle and Change is the first book to bring together the topics of language and gender, African languages, and gender in African contexts, and it does so in a descriptive, explanatory and critical way. Including fascinating new work and new, often challenging data from Botswana, Chad, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, this collection looks at some ‘traditional’ uses of language in relation to the gender of its speakers and the gendered nature of the languages themselves; it also identifies and explores social change in terms of both gender and sexuality, as reflected in and constructed by language and discourse. The contributions to this volume are accessibly written and will be of interest to students and established academics working on African sociolinguistics and discourse, as well as those whose interest is language, gender and sexuality.