Language Repertoires and State Construction in Africa

Language Repertoires and State Construction in Africa PDF Author: David D. Laitin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521413435
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Most African countries have a population composed of a multitude of language groups and most African citizens have a varied repertoire. David Laitin addresses the problem of language planning in Africa and the role of language politics in the process of state formation.

Language Repertoires and State Construction in Africa

Language Repertoires and State Construction in Africa PDF Author: David D. Laitin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521413435
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Most African countries have a population composed of a multitude of language groups and most African citizens have a varied repertoire. David Laitin addresses the problem of language planning in Africa and the role of language politics in the process of state formation.

Language Repertoires and State Construction in Africa

Language Repertoires and State Construction in Africa PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


African Languages, Development and the State

African Languages, Development and the State PDF Author: Richard Fardon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134868049
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
This shows that multilingusim does not pose for Africans the problems of communication that Europeans imagine and that the mismatch between policy statements and their pragmatic outcomes is a far more serious problem for future development

State-Building and Multilingual Education in Africa

State-Building and Multilingual Education in Africa PDF Author: Ericka A. Albaugh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139916777
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
How do governments in Africa make decisions about language? What does language have to do with state-building, and what impact might it have on democracy? This manuscript provides a longue durée explanation for policies toward language in Africa, taking the reader through colonial, independence, and contemporary periods. It explains the growing trend toward the use of multiple languages in education as a result of new opportunities and incentives. The opportunities incorporate ideational relationships with former colonizers as well as the work of language NGOs on the ground. The incentives relate to the current requirements of democratic institutions, and the strategies leaders devise to win elections within these constraints. By contrasting the environment faced by African leaders with that faced by European state-builders, it explains the weakness of education and limited spread of standard languages on the continent. The work combines constructivist understanding about changing preferences with realist insights about the strategies leaders employ to maintain power.

Tracing Language Movement in Africa

Tracing Language Movement in Africa PDF Author: Ericka A. Albaugh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190657553
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
The great diversity of ethnicities and languages in Africa encourages a vision of Africa as a fragmented continent, with language maps only perpetuating this vision by drawing discrete language groups. In reality, however, most people can communicate with most others within and across linguistic boundaries, even if not in languages taught or learned in schools. Many disciplines have looked carefully at language movement and change on the continent, but their lack of interaction has prevented the emergence of a cohesive picture of African languages. Tracing Language Movement in Africa gathers eighteen scholars together to offer a truly multidisciplinary representation of language in Africa, combining insights from history, archaeology, religion, linguistics, political science, and philosophy. The resulting volume illuminates commonalities and distinctions in these disciplines' understanding of language change and movement in Africa. The volume is empirical -- aiming to represent language more accurately on the continent -- as well as theoretical. It identifies the theories that each discipline uses to make sense of language movement in Africa in plain terms and highlights the themes that cut across all disciplines: how scholars use data, understand boundaries, represent change, and conceptualize power. The volume is organized to reflect differing conceptions of language that arise from its discipline-specific contributions: that is, tendencies to study changes that consolidate language or those that splinter it, viewing languages as whole or in part. Each contribution includes a short explanation of a discipline's theoretical and methodological approaches to language movement and change to ensure that the chapters are accessible to non-specialists, followed by an illustrative empirical case study. This volume will inspire multidisciplinary conversations around the study of language change in Africa, opening new interdisciplinary dialogue and spurring scholars to adapt the questions, data, and method of other disciplines to the problems that animate their own fields.

Language and National Identity in Africa

Language and National Identity in Africa PDF Author: Andrew Simpson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191536814
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This book focuses on language, culture, and national identity in Africa. Leading specialists examine countries in every part of the continent - Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Senegal, Mali, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Zanbia, South Africa, and the nations of the Horn, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia. Each chapter describes and examines the country's linguistic and political history and the relation of its languages to national, ethnic, and cultural identities, and assesses the relative status of majority and minority languages and the role of language in ethnic conflict. Of the book's authors, fifteen are from Africa and seven from Europe and the USA. Jargon-free, fully referenced, and illustrated with seventeen maps, this book will be of value to a wide range of readers in linguistics, politics, history, sociology, and anthropology. It will interest everyone wishing to understand the dynamic interactions between language and politics in Africa, in the past and now.

The Languages and Linguistics of Africa

The Languages and Linguistics of Africa PDF Author: Tom Güldemann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110421666
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1032

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Book Description
This innovative handbook takes a fresh look at the currently underestimated linguistic diversity of Africa, the continent with the largest number of languages in the world. It covers the major domains of linguistics, offering both a representative picture of Africa’s linguistic landscape as well as new and at times unconventional perspectives. The focus is not so much on exhaustiveness as on the fruitful relationship between African and general linguistics and the contributions the two domains can make to each other. This volume is thus intended for readers with a specific interest in African languages and also for students and scholars within the greater discipline of linguistics.

Language Policy and Identity Construction

Language Policy and Identity Construction PDF Author: Eric A. Anchimbe
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027218730
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
The (dis)empowerment of languages through language policy in multilingual postcolonial communities often shapes speakers identification with these languages, their attitude towards other languages in the community, and their choices in interpersonal and intergroup communication. Focusing on the dynamics of Cameroon s multilingualism, this book contributes to current debates on the impact of politic language policy on daily language use in sociocultural and interpersonal interactions, multiple identity construction, indigenous language teaching and empowerment, the use of Cameroon Pidgin English in certain formal institutional domains initially dominated by the official languages, and linguistic patterns of social interaction for politeness, respect, and in-group bonding. Due to the multiple perspectives adopted, the book will be of interest to sociolinguists, applied linguists, pragmaticians, Afrikanists, and scholars of postcolonial linguistics."

State Ideology and Language in Tanzania

State Ideology and Language in Tanzania PDF Author: Jan Blommaert
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748675817
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Tanzania is often seen as an exceptional case of successful language planning in Africa, with Swahili being spread to all corners of the country. Yet, this objective success has always been accompanied by a culture of complaints proclaiming its utter failure. State Ideology and Language in Tanzania sets out to explore this paradox through a richly documented historical, sociolinguistic and anthropological approach covering the story of Swahili from the early days of independence until today. Focusing on the ways in which Swahili was swept up in the 'Ujamaa revolution' - the transition to socialism led by president Nyerere - Jan Blommaert demonstrates how the language became an emblem not just of the Tanzanian 'cultural' nation, but above all of the 'political' nation. Using Swahili meant the acceptance of socialism, and the spread of Swahili across the country should equal the spread of Ujamaa socialism. When this did not happen, the verdict of failure was proclaimed on Swahili, which did not prevent the language from becoming one of the most widely used and dynamic languages on the continent.This book is a thoroughly revised version of the 1999 edition, which was welcomed at the time as a classic. It now extends the period of coverage to 2012 and includes an entirely new chapter on current developments, making this updated edition an essential read for students and scholars in language, linguistics and African Studies.

New Directions in African Education

New Directions in African Education PDF Author: S. Nombuso Dlamini
Publisher: University of Calgary Press
ISBN: 1552382125
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
A collection of essays which critically examines education in the African context and presents possible courses of action to reinvent its future.