Literacy and Multilingualism in Africa (original) (raw)
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Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2016
This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Please check back later for the full article.The pervasiveness of multilingualism throughout the African continent has led it to be viewed as Africa’s “lingua franca.” Sociolinguistic research on this topic has concentrated mostly on urbanized areas where, as a norm, individual language repertoires are dominated by the interplay between European ex-colonial languages, African lingua francas, and local languages, and where language ideologies emphasize the ordering of languages in a hierarchy that is tied to social status. Similar situations are also found also in rural areas of Africa. However, recent research suggests that the dynamics of multilingualism in some rural regions, in particular those characterized by high linguistic diversity, can be of quite different character than urban ones and that the methods required to study them are distinct from those that have been used to...
Multilingualism and education in Africa
Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics, 2019
Maputo), smaller urban settlements (e.g. Arua, Gulu and Koboko, in Uganda), village or homestead, and mobile hamlets in remote desert contexts (e.g. Afar, Kalahari and Sahara deserts). Complex ecologies of multilingualism on the continent have significant bearing on where and how different multilingual education practices are carried out. They have bearing on the purposes for which multilingual people make deliberate linguistic choices, that involve collaborative and compliant activities, and that also involve activities of resistance. Choice and agency in linguistic choices may be understood as individual and community expressions of linguistic citizenship (Stroud, 2001; Stroud and Heugh 2004) or those of the 'multilingual citizen' (Lim, Wee & Stroud, ftc.) Pre-colonial hierarchies of languages are related to the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires, for example, of the Kingdom of Kush, 8 th century BCE, and the Malian Empire of the 13 th to the 17 th century CE. They adjust in relation to the mobility of people, such as the movement of pastoralists and Arab traders across North Africa, the Magreb, and into the Sahel from the 7 th to 13 th century CE. They are influenced by the number of speakers of languages, and these range from those spoken by very few people in remote settings, for example, languages spoken by the San of the Kalahari Desert (Bolaane, 2014) or the Baka and Twa of the equatorial Central Africa, to those used by millions of people (e.g. Hausa and Kiswahili) across several countries. They are connected with systems of belief or faith, for example, Coptic Christian in the East, and Islam which is prominent in the North and West. The European partition of Africa in the terminal years of the 19 th century was accompanied by a formal introduction of colonial languages that were layered over the pre-colonial ecology of each setting in Africa (see also Djité, 2008; Omoniyi, 2003). This last layer has left a lasting imprint across the continent that plays out in different ways in urban, rural and remote geographical settings, particularlys in the architecture of administrative, educational, legal and political systems. Attempts to re-imagine Africa as a continent of nation-states that mirror the nation state-national language nexus of the colonial powers, via monolingual (bilingual at best) systems have had numerous consequences. On the one hand, pre-colonial ecologies of spoken and written languages have been rendered invisible in the administrative architecture of each state. On the other hand, the nationstate projects have not succeeded in establishing satisfactory monolingual (or bilingual) systems. This is particularly in relation to languages in education. From within the continent, these attempts are understood as having exacerbated political, educational and socioeconomic (hierarchical)
Multilingualism in Rural Africa
[This article is currently under review for publication in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, http://linguistics.oxfordre.com/\] The pervasiveness of multilingualism throughout the African continent has led it to be viewed as Africa's " lingua franca ". Nevertheless, sociolinguistic research on this topic has concentrated mostly on urbanized areas, even though the majority of Africans still live in rural regions, and rural multilingualism is clearly of much older provenance than its urban counterpart. In urban domains, individual language repertoires are dominated by the interplay between European ex-colonial languages, African lingua francas, and local languages, and language ideologies emphasize the ordering of languages in a hierarchy that is tied to social status. The situation in rural areas is clearly distinct, though it has yet to be thoroughly investigated, and the goal of this review is to summarize what is currently understood about rural multilingualism in Africa, highlighting, in particular, the ways in which it varies from better-known urban multilingualism. This survey begins by examining how early work on rural language use in Africa tended to background the presence of multilingualism in these societies. It then explores rural
MULTILITERACIES AND MULTIMODALITY IN ENGLISH IN EDUCATION IN AFRICA: MAPPING THE TERRAIN
English Studies in Africa, 2006
The academic context Multiliteracies and Multimodality are approaches to literacy education and meaning-making which have pertinence for the following domains. Though the interest of these domains overlap to a certain extent, each one identifies its object of scrutiny differently, uses a different discourse and employs a different method:
Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus, 2012
This paper draws on the notion of multilingualism as social practice to critique postcolonial language planning and policies in Africa. Drawing on illustrations from Ethnologue's (2009) languages of Africa, studies on language planning and policy in Africa, and recent developments in harmonisation of cross-border language research (Prah 1998; Banda 2008), the paper argues that there are distortions in the conceptualisation of multilingualism and what it entails in Africa's socio-cultural contexts. In turn, the paper faults monolingual biases in the notions and models used to describe and promote multilingualism in Africa, which mirror descriptions of the language situation in Western socio-cultural contexts. The paper argues for cross-linguistic and cross-border status and corpus planning to take advantage of multilingualism as a linguistic resource for socioeconomic development in Africa. The paper concludes by highlighting the prospects for linguistic repertoire-based multilingual models for language planning and policy in Africa.
2007
Alphabétisation et diversité linguistique et dans une perspective globale: échange interculturel avec des pays africains ISBN 978-92-871-6140-6 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic (CD-Rom, Internet, etc.) or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from Publishing Division, Communication and Research Directorate
Conflicted Worlds of Multilingual Communities in Africa: Literacy Tangled in Words
Journal of language and literacy education, 2016
Dr. Dainess Maganda is the Director of the African Languages Program at the University of Georgia. Her publications center on language ideologies and on pathways to promote the use of African languages in US schools and internationally. Recent publications include a book, “Language and Literature: Vehicles for the Enhancement of Cultural Understanding” (2016); article, “The Scarcity of Literature Written in African Languages in American Libraries” (2015). ABSTRACT: Drawing from a sociocultural perspective of literacy, with the goal to promote the use of African Native Languages (ANL) in schools, I conducted a Participatory Action Research in one multilingual primary school community in North West Tanzania. For three weeks, 19 teachers, 19 parents and 1196 grade students collaborated with each other in a writing workshop to write supplemental books for their school library. Through the findings I show that students wavered to use their native languages. Students preferred their natio...