The Languages and Linguistics of Africa

The Languages and Linguistics of Africa PDF Author: Tom Güldemann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110421755
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1180

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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.

The Languages and Linguistics of Africa

The Languages and Linguistics of Africa PDF Author: Tom Güldemann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110421755
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1180

Get Book Here

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.

Linguistics in the Service of Africa

Linguistics in the Service of Africa PDF Author: Josef J. Schmied
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description


A History of African Linguistics

A History of African Linguistics PDF Author: H. Ekkehard Wolff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108417973
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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

The Sociolinguistics of Development in Africa

The Sociolinguistics of Development in Africa PDF Author: Paulin G. Djité
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
ISBN: 1847690459
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
This book is an analysis of modernisation informed by the place of language in education, health, the economy and governance in the African context. It paints a wide canvas of Africa in its different facets, and shows how language is used as an instrument to deny access to socioeconomic and political emancipation.

Language Policy and Economics: The Language Question in Africa

Language Policy and Economics: The Language Question in Africa PDF Author: Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137316233
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This book addresses the perennial question of how to promote Africa’s indigenous languages as medium of instruction in educational systems. Breaking with the traditional approach to the continent’s language question by focusing on the often overlooked issue of the link between African languages and economic development, Language Policy and Economics argues that African languages are an integral part of a nation’s socio-political and economic development. Therefore, the book argues that any language policy designed to promote these languages in such higher domains as the educational system in particular must have economic advantages if the intent is to succeed, and proposes Prestige Planning as the way to address this issue. The proposition is a welcome break away from language policies which pay lip-service to the empowerment of African languages while, by default, strengthening the stranglehold of imported European languages.

Languages in Africa

Languages in Africa PDF Author: Elizabeth C. Zsiga
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1626161534
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
People in many African communities live within a series of concentric circles when it comes to language. In a small group, a speaker uses an often unwritten and endangered mother tongue that is rarely used in school. A national indigenous language—written, widespread, sometimes used in school—surrounds it. An international language like French or English, a vestige of colonialism, carries prestige, is used in higher education, and promises mobility—and yet it will not be well known by its users. The essays in Languages in Africa explore the layers of African multilingualism as they affect language policy and education. Through case studies ranging across the continent, the contributors consider multilingualism in the classroom as well as in domains ranging from music and film to politics and figurative language. The contributors report on the widespread devaluing and even death of indigenous languages. They also investigate how poor teacher training leads to language-related failures in education. At the same time, they demonstrate that education in a mother tongue can work, linguists can use their expertise to provoke changes in language policies, and linguistic creativity thrives in these multilingual communities.

Language and Development in Africa

Language and Development in Africa PDF Author: Ekkehard Wolff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107088550
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
This volume explores the central role of language across all aspects of public and private life in Africa.

Repertoires and Choices in African Languages

Repertoires and Choices in African Languages PDF Author: Friederike Lüpke
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 1614511942
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Most African languages are spoken by communities as one of several languages present on a daily basis. The persistence of multilingualism and the linguistic creativity manifest in the playful use of different languages are striking, especially against the backdrop of language death and expanding monolingualism elsewhere in the world. The effortless mastery of several languages is disturbing, however, for those who take essentialist perspectives that see it as a problem rather than a resource, and for the dominating, conflictual, sociolinguistic model of multilingualism. This volume investigates African minority languages in the context of changing patterns of multilingualism, and also assesses the status of African languages in terms of existing influential vitality scales. An important aspect of multilingual praxis is the speakers' agency in making choices, their repertoires of registers and the multiplicity of language ideology associated with different ways of speaking. The volume represents a new and original contribution to the ethnography of speaking of multilingual practices and the cultural ideas associated with them.

Africa in Translation

Africa in Translation PDF Author: Sara Pugach
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472117823
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
"Africa in Translation is a thoughtful contribution to the literature on colonialism and culture in Germany and will find readers in the fields of German history and German studies as well as appealing to audiences in the large and interdisciplinary fields of colonialism and postcolonialism." ---Jennifer Jenkins, University of Toronto The study of African languages in Germany, or Afrikanistik, originated among Protestant missionaries in the early nineteenth century and was incorporated into German universities after Germany entered the "Scramble for Africa" and became a colonial power in the 1880s. Despite its long history, few know about the German literature on African languages or the prominence of Germans in the discipline of African philology. In Africa in Translation: A History of Colonial Linguistics in Germany and Beyond, 1814--1945, Sara Pugach works to fill this gap, arguing that Afrikanistik was essential to the construction of racialist knowledge in Germany. While in other countries biological explanations of African difference were central to African studies, the German approach was essentially linguistic, linking language to culture and national identity. Pugach traces this linguistic focus back to the missionaries' belief that conversion could not occur unless the "Word" was allowed to touch a person's heart in his or her native language, as well as to the connection between German missionaries living in Africa and armchair linguists in places like Berlin and Hamburg. Over the years, this resulted in Afrikanistik scholars using language and culture rather than biology to categorize African ethnic and racial groups. Africa in Translation follows the history of Afrikanistik from its roots in the missionaries' practical linguistic concerns to its development as an academic subject in both Germany and South Africa throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sara Pugach is Assistant Professor of History at California State University, Los Angeles. Jacket image: Perthes, Justus. Mittel und Süd-Afrika. Map. Courtesy of the University of Michigan's Stephen S. Clark Library map collection.

Language in South Africa

Language in South Africa PDF Author: Rajend Mesthrie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521791052
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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Book Description
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.