Yabbing and Wording
Yabbing and Wording

Author: Izuu Nwankwọ

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2022-12-31

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1920033866

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Yabbing and Wording: The artistry of Nigerian stand-up comedy is a long-overdue academic interrogation of the novel stand-up practice in Nigeria as performance. 'Yabbing' comes from the Nigerian Pidgin English verb, 'yab', which means a satirical jibe thrown at individuals, groups or institutions. Nigeria's Fela Anikulapo-Kuti used this effectively in his recorded and live music performances against successive military regimes. 'Wording' derives from the English term 'word' and refers to a game in which parties exchange insults. It is a modern-day coinage for traditional forms of joking that existed across Nigeria and elsewhere in precolonial times. In this book, Nwankw? identifies 'yabbing' and 'wording' as outstanding indigenous elements within contemporary stand-up practice in Nigeria. On the one hand, these local joking patterns inform how comedians fashion their narratives. On the other, they mitigate offence and how the audience responds to ridicule in joke performance venues. The book's strength is its academic perspective and the inclusion of as many examples of stand-up and comedians as possible, to give a panoramic view of the practice. It also traces the historical path of the development of professional stand-up comedy in Nigeria. Its closing chapters detail the global outreach of Nigerian stand-up while also anticipating its future developments.

Stand-up Comedy in Africa
Stand-up Comedy in Africa

Author: Izuu Nwankwọ

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2022-03-21

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 3838216083

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African cultural productions of humour have increased even in the face of myriad economic foibles and social upheavals. For instance, from the 1990s, stand-up comedy emerged across the continent and has maintained a pervasive presence since then. Its specificities are related to contemporary economic and political contexts and are also drawn from its pre-colonial history, that of joking forms and relationships, and orality. Izuu Nwankwọ's fascinating collected volume offers a transnational appraisal of this unique art form spanning different nations of the continent and its diasporas. The book engages variously with jokesters, their materials, the mediums of dissemination, and the cultural value(s) and relevance of their stage work, encompassing the form and content of the practice. Its ruling theoretical perspective comes from theatre and performance, cultural studies, linguistics, and literary studies.

Humour and Politics in Africa
Humour and Politics in Africa

Author: Daniel Hammett

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2023-03-27

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1529219736

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Analyses of humour often focus primarily on the Global North, with little consideration for examples and practices from elsewhere. This book provides a vital contribution to humour theory by developing a Global South perspective. Taking a wide-ranging view across the whole of the continent, the book examines the relationship between humour and politics in Africa. It considers the context of the production and reception of humour in African contexts and argues that humour is more than just symbolic. Moving beyond the idea of humour as a mode of resistance, the book investigates the ‘political work’ that humour does and explores the complex entanglements in which the politics, practices and performances of humour are located.

African Battle Traditions of Insult
African Battle Traditions of Insult

Author: Tanure Ojaide

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-04-26

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 303115617X

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This book explores the “battles” of words, songs, poetry, and performance in Africa and the African Diaspora. These are usually highly competitive, artistic contests in which rival parties duel for supremacy in poetry composition and/or its performance. This volume covers the history of this battle tradition, from its origins in Africa, especially the udje and halo of the Urhobo and Ewe respectively, to its transportation to the Americas and the Caribbean region during the Atlantic slave trade period, and its modern and contemporary manifestations as battle rap or other forms of popular music in Africa. Almost everywhere there are contemporary manifestations of the more traditional, older genres. The book is thus made up of studies of contests in which rivals duel for supremacy in verbal arts, song-poetry, and performance as they display their wit, sense of humor, and poetic expertise.

Australian English - The National Language
Australian English - The National Language

Author: Gerhard Leitner

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-02-06

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 311090487X

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Australia's English raises many questions among experts and the general public. What is it like? How has English changed by being transplanted to other parts of the world? Does the rise of AusE and other varieties endanger the role of English as a world language? Past studies have often been selective, focusing on the esoteric and non-typical, and ignoring the contact situation in which Australian English has developed. This book and its companion, Australia's Many Voices. Ethnic Englishes, Indigenous and Migrant Languages. Policy and Education, develop and apply a comprehensive and integrative approach that anchors English in the entire 'habitat' of Australia's languages that it both upset and transformed. Based on a wide range of data and on the assumption that all manifestations of Australian English must cohere as a system, this book retraces the social, psycholinguistic and linguistic history of the language. It locates the contact with indigenous and migrant languages and with American English in the appropriate sociohistorical context and shows how several layers of migration have shaped it. As it stratified, it was gradually accepted and developed into a fully-fledged national variety or epicentre of English that could be raised to the status of national language. Implications on educational policy and attempts to reach out into the Asia-Pacific region have followed logically from national status. The study is of interest for specialists of English and Australian Studies as well as a range of other disciplines. Its discursive, non-technical style and presentation makes it accessible to non-specialists with no background in linguistics.

Australia's Many Voices
Australia's Many Voices

Author: Gerhard Leitner

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 9783110181944

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Develops a comprehensive, descriptive, and sociohistorical view of mainstream Australian English and of the social processes that have made it possible for it to become the national language of Australia reaching out into the Asia-Pacific region.

Coastal Fishes of Southern Africa
Coastal Fishes of Southern Africa

Author: Phillip C. Heemstra

Publisher: NISC (PTY) LTD

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 9781920033019

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A guide to over 400 species of the fishes along the coast of southern Africa, this work features over 600 original paintings showing changes with growth and sexual differences in colour of many of the fishes. The species accounts include descriptions and other information for identification and comparison of similar species.

The Anthropology of Africa: Challenges for the 21st Century
The Anthropology of Africa: Challenges for the 21st Century

Author: Nkwi, Paul Nchoji

Publisher: Langaa RPCIG

Published: 2015-02-03

Total Pages: 656

ISBN-13: 9956792799

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In 1999 (August 30 - September 2) the Pan African Anthropological Association (PAAA) marked the 10th anniversary of its creation by holding its 9th Annual Conference in Yaounde, Cameroon - the city and country of its birth. The conference, themed "The Anthropology of Africa: Challenges for the 21st Century", was attended by some seventy participants, mostly African. Among the international participants was Dr Sydel Silverman, President of the Wenner Gren Foundation at the time - a long term partner of the PAAA; she was present at the inaugural conference in 1988. The conference proceedings were initially published in 2000 with very limited circulation. Given the continued relevance of the papers presented, and in view of the call by the President of the PAAA for African anthropologists to reunite anthropological theory and practice in the teaching programmes of African universities, the PAAA is pleased to republish the proceedings of its landmark 9th Annual Conference. The book consists of forty three divided into eight parts, namely: i) teaching anthropology in the decades ahead; ii) Health Challenges: HIV/AIDS Anthropological Perspectives; iii) NGOS: Use and Misuse of Anthropology; iv) Anthropological Focus on Environment; v) Some Applied Issues in Anthropology; vi) The African Family in Crisis; vii) Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflicts; and viii) Population issues and anthropology: Fertility Crisis. Paul Nkwi concludes his introduction to the volume with these words: "The Anthropology of Africa will remain for a long time, fundamentally applied if it is to meet the challenges of the 21st Century."

Wrecking Ball
Wrecking Ball

Author: Stu Woolman

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2021-04-29

Total Pages: 612

ISBN-13: 1920033734

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Wrecking Ball explores, in an unprecedented manner, a decalogue of wicked problems that confronts humanity: Nuclear proliferation, climate change, pandemics, permanent technological unemployment, Orwellian public and private surveillance, social media that distorts reality, cyberwarfare, the fragmentation of democracies, the inability of nations to cabin private power, the failure of multinational institutions to promote collaboration and the deepening of autocratic rule in countries that have never known anything but extractive institutions. Collectively, or even severally, these wicked problems constitute crises that could end civilisation. Does this list frighten you, or do you blithely assume that tomorrow will be just like yesterday? Wrecking Ball shows that without an inclusive system of global governance, the collective action required to solve those wicked problems falls beyond the remit of the world's 20 inclusive democracies, 50 flawed democracies and 130 extractive, elitist autocracies. Flawed democracies and autocracies that already struggle to produce goods necessary for their own citizens to flourish, are simply incapable of committing to international arrangements that address the existential threats posed by the decalogue of wicked problems. This then is our children's inheritance: Dystopias far, far worse than the polities that we ourselves have known. What, if anything, can mitigate the harms that are our legacy? Wrecking Ball offers, as an answer, a ground-breaking analysis of South Africa's political economy. It demonstrates that this country's elitist and extractive political and economic institutions not only make resolution of ongoing domestic crises unattainable, likewise, they make meaningful responses to wicked problems impossible. Smart people think they have all the answers. Without laboring under any such illusions, Martin Luther King Jr eloquently opined: 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.' But what will happen, King would acidly ask, if we continue to dawdle, and simply run out of time? Wrecking Ball similalry operates under no such 'smart' pretenses, and undeterred and unmatched ventures into terrrains traversed by truly great political economists: Smith, Ricardo, Marx and Keynes. By knitting together what we all know to be the facts, with cutting edge theory in economics, sociology, history and political science, the book paints an unflinching portrait of where we are, and where we are headed. Are we ready to be honest with ourselves about the likely future of this overheated, overpopulated planet?