This book is a compressed version of some commissioned and inspired works of aspects of linguistics by Okon Essien, indigenous Professor of Linguistics in the south-south and south-east of Nigeria. Covered by the essays are issues concerning language endangerment, linguistic revival of vanishing tongues of Africa, language and ethnicity, language and power and language and politics.
Bringing together theory, research, and practice to dismantle Anti-Black Linguistic Racism and white linguistic supremacy, this book provides ethnographic snapshots of how Black students navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts. By highlighting the counterstories of Black students, Baker-Bell demonstrates how traditional approaches to language education do not account for the emotional harm, internalized linguistic racism, or consequences these approaches have on Black students' sense of self and identity. This book presents Anti-Black Linguistic Racism as a framework that explicitly names and richly captures the linguistic violence, persecution, dehumanization, and marginalization Black Language-speakers endure when using their language in schools and in everyday life. To move toward Black linguistic liberation, Baker-Bell introduces a new way forward through Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy, a pedagogical approach that intentionally and unapologetically centers the linguistic, cultural, racial, intellectual, and self-confidence needs of Black students. This volume captures what Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy looks like in classrooms while simultaneously illustrating how theory, research, and practice can operate in tandem in pursuit of linguistic and racial justice. A crucial resource for educators, researchers, professors, and graduate students in language and literacy education, writing studies, sociology of education, sociolinguistics, and critical pedagogy, this book features a range of multimodal examples and practices through instructional maps, charts, artwork, and stories that reflect the urgent need for antiracist language pedagogies in our current social and political climate.
This volume is the first text to provide a comprehensive account of the great books across the academic disciplines written by Africans born in the continent and those who became naturalized citizens of African countries. These great books are those that have had a powerful, important or affecting influence on the author of a chapter in this book, as an individual, and on society. The books included here are mostly of the storytelling type and, thus, not representative of most of the academic disciplines. This volume allows each contributor to write a chapter on a discipline showcasing five great books written by African authors. Each selection is appraised and suggestions made by other experts in a discipline, while every chapter entails an introduction to the topic, a conceptual discussion of the discipline, a book-by-book review of the five books, and a conclusion and recommendations for research using the selected books.
This book contains papers which focus on the twin subjects of globalisation and information/communication technologies (ICTs). They express either fear or optimism regarding their effects on the survival of indigenous cultures, languages and literature. This book is a must read for anyone who is interested to learn more about the role of globalisation in the erosion of cultural as well as linguistic diversity, and the impact of ICTs in the development of indigenous languages in Africa.
Digital Media and the Preservation of Indigenous Languages in Africa: Toward a Digitalized and Sustainable Society presents cutting-edge epistemological debates, academic case studies, and empirical research from African scholars on the intersection of digital media technologies, artificial intelligence, and the preservation of Indigenous languages in the continent. This edited collection provides a methodology for African researchers, practitioners, and marginalized communities to integrate digital technologies into their lives to foster innovation, advance the documentation and preservation of underrepresented languages, and promote African-centered epistemologies. Contributors to this edited volume argue that African societies should acknowledge and embrace digital media platforms. Despite these platforms’ potential as sites of epistemic colonialism, they are essential for promoting ways of life that reflect the diversity and importance of Indigenous cultures. For Indigenous languages and local epistemologies to flourish in this rapidly evolving technological era, African communities must employ a variety of contemporary practices and strategies to document, protect, and preserve ways of being that have formerly been relegated to the periphery.
The South African Language Rights Monitor (SALRM) Project surveys the mainstream newspapers of South Africa with a view to compile annual reports on the developments on the language front in the country. While the main focus is on language rights and language (rights) activism, the yearly Monitor also covers other language-related problems, including name changes, as well as aspects of language promotion. For anybody interested in subjects ranging from the (proposed) renaming of Bloemfontein, Louis Trichardt, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg International Airport to the incident of Johann Rupert withdrawing his advertisements from a British magazine, and from the saga on mother-tongue education at schools to the language policy in the judicial system and the success of the South African films Yesterday and U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, the SALRM 2005 provides a rich source of information. The SALRM Project is housed in the Department of Language Management and Language Practice at the University of the Free State.
As there are different races and people in the world, so there are different cultures - meaning that cultural diversity is inevitable. Through human contact and association cultures meet. In such meetings every individual and culture projects itself as worthy, and should be held in high esteem. In today's world it is not encouraging to be ethnocentric - always taking action or inactions that crystallize and project a feeling of one's own culture or racial superiority. Such attitude obstructs meaningful interaction, human relations, tolerance and co-operation. Conversely, the skill and ability to tolerate and communicate effectively with people from diverse cultures is a social activity which begins from thought to behaviour, in both spoken and non-spoken versions. The book contains 19 essays, structured into five parts.
The South African Language Rights Monitor (SALRM) Project surveys the mainstream newspapers of South Africa with a view to compile annual reports on the developments on the language front in the country. While the main focus is on language rights and language (rights) activism, the yearly Monitor also covers other language-related problems, including name changes, as well as aspects of language promotion. For anybody interested in subjects ranging from the (proposed) renaming of Bloemfontein, Louis Trichardt, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg International Airport to the incident of Johann Rupert withdrawing his advertisements from a British magazine, and from the saga on mother-tongue education at schools to the language policy in the judicial system and the success of the South African films Yesterday and U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, the SALRM 2005 provides a rich source of information. The SALRM Project is housed in the Department of Language Management and Language Practice at the University of the Free State.
Interrogates and explores African literature in African languages today, and the continuing interfaces between works in indigenous languages and those written in European languages or languages of colonizers. Sixty years after the Conference of African Writers of English Expression at Makerere University, the dominance in the global canon of African literatures written in European languages over those in indigenous languages continues to be an issue. This volume of ALT re-examines this central question of African literatures to ask, 'What is the state of African literatures in African languages today?' Contributors discuss the translation of Gurnah's novel Paradise to Swahili, and Osemwegie's Ọrọ Epic to English, and Wolof wrestlers' panegyrics. They analyse Edo eco-critical poetry, and the poetics of Igbo mask poetry, and morality in early prose fiction in indigenous Nigerian languages. Other essays contribute a semiotic analysis of Duruaku's A Matter of Identity, and the decolonization of trauma in Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them. Overall, the volume paints a complex image of African cultural production in indigenous languages, especially in the ways Africa's oral performance traditions remain resilient in the face of a seemingly undiminished presence of non-African language literary traditions.
