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 : 185

Get Book Here

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.

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 : 185

Get Book Here

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.

Language Ideological Debates

Language Ideological Debates PDF Author: Jan Blommaert
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 9783110163506
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 468

Get Book Here

Book Description
Taking off from the apt epigram that "... language, after all, is a purely historical phenomenon", these sociolinguistic analyses present debates over how language ideologies are formed, articulated, and entextualized. The editor's opening and final essays entitled "the debate is open" and "the debate is closed" bookend ten debates relating to language, identity, and political power: French-into-Corsican translations, dialect in Switzerland, Catalan vs. Spanish in Barcelona since the 1992 Olympics, Canada's linguistic cultures, bilingual education in the US, Ebonics, Singapore's "Speak Mandarin' campaign, the revival status of Israeli Hebrew, and European tongues and literary genres in postcolonial Africa.

State Ideology and Language in Tanzania

State Ideology and Language in Tanzania PDF Author: Jan Blommaert
Publisher: Koppe
ISBN: 9783896450241
Category : Ideology
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book Here

Book Description


Society and Language Use

Society and Language Use PDF Author: Jürgen Jaspers
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027289166
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

Book Description
The ten volumes of Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics, thus dividing its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While the other volumes select specific philosophical, cognitive, grammatical, cultural, variational, interactional, or discursive angles, this seventh volume underlines the mutually constitutive relation between society and language use. It highlights a number of the most prominent approaches of this relation and it draws attention to a selected number of topics that the study of language in its social context has characteristically brought to bear. Despite their theoretical and methodological differences, each of the chapters in this book assumes that it is necessary to look at society and language use as interdependent phenomena, and that by attending to microscopic linguistic phenomena one is also keeping a finger on the pulse of broader, macroscopic social tendencies that at the same time facilitate and constrain language use. The introduction provides a sketch of the intellectual antecedents of the volume’s two ‘mother disciplines’, viz., linguistics and social theory before pointing at recent common ground in the rising attention for discourse and what has come to be called ‘late-modernity’.

Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa - Highlights from a Project

Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa - Highlights from a Project PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9460912222
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is based on chapters in a series of four books from the first five years (2002-2006) of the Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa (LOITASA) project. LOITASA is a NUFU-funded (Norwegian University Fund) project which began in January 2002 and will continue through to the end of 2011. The chapters reflect the state of the research at the end of the first five years of LOITASA in 2006 and were selected by reviewers independent of the project. The selection of chapters brought together bring to the forefront the dilemmas facing developing countries as they seek to position themselves in an increasingly interconnected global system, while at the same time maintaining a sense of national and regional identity. The chapters in this collection reflect both positive outcomes when the medium of instruction is a widely-known language as well as the challenges of mother tongue instruction in countries where historically a powerful language like English has dominated. The four LOITASA books in this series from which the chapters in this book are drawn are: ●Language of instruction in Tanzania and South Africa (LOITASA) published by E & D Ltd, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania ●Researching the language of instruction in Tanzania and South Africa published by African Minds, Cape Town South Africa ●LOITASA Research in Progress published by KAD Associates, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. ●Focus on fresh data on the language of instruction debate in Tanzania and South Africa published by African Minds, Cape Town, South Africa. All four books are edited by Birgit Brock-Utne, the Norwegian project leader of the LOITASA project; Zubeida Desai, the South African project leader and Martha Qorro, who is on the project steering committee in Tanzania.

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 : 382

Get Book Here

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: 3110421755
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1085

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.

Handbook of Language and Communication: Diversity and Change

Handbook of Language and Communication: Diversity and Change PDF Author: Marlis Hellinger
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110198533
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 806

Get Book Here

Book Description
In line with the overall perspective of the Handbook series, the focus of Vol.9 is on language-related problems arising in the context of linguistic diversity and change, and the contributions Applied Linguistics can offer for solutions. Part I, “Language minorities and inequality,” presents situations of language contact and linguistic diversity as world-wide phenomena. The focus is on indigenous and immigrant linguistic minorities, their (lack of) access to linguistic rights through language policies and the impact on their linguistic future .Part II “Language planning and language change,” focuses on the impact of colonialism, imperialism, globalisation and economics as factors that language policies and planning measures must account for in responding to problems deriving from language contact and linguistic diversity. Part III, “Language variation and change in institutional contexts,” examines language-related problems in selected institutional areas of communication (education, the law, religion, science, the Internet) which will often derive from socioeconomic, cultural and other non-linguistic asymmetries. Part IV, “The discourse of linguistic diversity and language change,” analyses linguistic diversity, language change and language reform as issues of public debates which are informed by different ideological positions, values and attitudes (e.g. with reference to sexism, racism, and political correctness).The volume also contains extensive reference sections and index material.

Language, Globalization and the Making of a Tanzanian Beauty Queen

Language, Globalization and the Making of a Tanzanian Beauty Queen PDF Author: Sabrina Billings
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
ISBN: 1783090774
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Get Book Here

Book Description
Through micro-analysis of language use, this book chronicles young women's pathways to becoming a Tanzanian beauty queen, offering an original perspective on the intersection of language with globalization, nationalism, and inequality in urban East Africa. This compelling linguistic ethnography considers the real-life effects, both on- and off-stage, of language policy, education, and gender dynamics for the women competing in the pageants. While highlighting many contestants' struggles for escape from poverty and patriarchy, the book also emphasizes their creative strategies – linguistic and otherwise – for bettering their lives and shows how people living in a global economic periphery take part in, and sometimes feel left out of, the wider world.

Durkheim and the Internet

Durkheim and the Internet PDF Author: Jan Blommaert
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350055212
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 137

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sociolinguistic evidence is an undervalued resource for social theory. In this book, Jan Blommaert uses contemporary sociolinguistic insights to develop a new sociological imagination, exploring how we construct and operate in online spaces, and what the implications of this are for offline social practice. Taking Émile Durkheim's concept of the 'social fact' (social behaviours that we all undertake under the influence of the society we live in) as the point of departure, he first demonstrates how the facts of language and social interaction can be used as conclusive refutations of individualistic theories of society such as 'Rational Choice'. Next, he engages with theorizing the post-Durkheimian social world in which we currently live. This new social world operates 'offline' as well as 'online' and is characterized by 'vernacular globalization', Arjun Appadurai's term to summarise the ways that larger processes of modernity are locally performed through new electronic media. Blommaert extrapolates from this rich concept to consider how our communication practices might offer a template for thinking about how we operate socially. Above all, he explores the relationship between sociolinguistics and social practice In Durkheim and the Internet, Blommaert proposes new theories of social norms, social action, identity, social groups, integration, social structure and power, all of them animated by a deep understanding of language and social interaction. In drawing on Durkheim and other classical sociologists including Simmel and Goffman, this book is relevant to students and researchers working in sociolinguistics as well as offering a wealth of new insights to scholars in the fields of digital and online communications, social media, sociology, and digital anthropology.