Language and Identity: Perceptions of the Shona-Ndebele Living in Zambia (original) (raw)
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2020
This paper examines some factors that contributed to the death of Ngoni language of Eastern province of Zambia. The study was carried out in Chipata town, the home district of Ngoni people. The paper also attempts to establish factors behind the vitality the Ngoni ethnic identity. A case study was conducted in a multi-ethnic community in which Ngonis were identified through their names and clans. A total of 25 participants were interviewed to elicit the participants’ ability to speak Ngoni language and knowledge of their clan background. The data collection method was complimented by information from written sources about Ngoni language. It has been revealed that factors such as intermarriage between Ngoni people and Nsenga speakers coupled with migration and Christianity led to the gradual extinction of Ngoni language. Despite the language shift of ngonis to Nsenga and Tumbuka languages, Ngonis have maintained the vitality of Ngoni ethnic identity due to their strong cultural value...
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The paper explores the socially transforming multilingual discourses which draw on rural and urban indigenous Zambian languages, (Zambian) English, and mixed codes. Using illustrations from a Zambian website and related studies on multilingual discourse practices in Zambia, the paper shows how local and diasporic Zambians enact role structures and identities in multilingual discourses. We focus on localized stylization of Zambian discourses, in which the multilingual code repertoire is used as resource for voice and agency as well as to enact relevant roles and identities. We show that Zambians use multilingualism to affiliate to traditional, modern, rural, urban, and hybrid identities, thus demonstrating the creative agency of non-western interactants to construct their own ‘grammars’ and cultures. Finally, we argue that multilingualism has become the means for transtribal, trans-regional, and transnational mobility for Zambians.
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This chapter aims to give the reader an idea about the linguistic situation in Zambia, and how language relates to national identity in the Zambian context. Zambia lies in the heart of central Africa and shares borders with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to the north, with Tanzania, Malawi, and Mozambique in the east, with Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia in the south, and with Angola in the west. Zambia has no direct access to the sea, but the Zambezi, one of Africa's largest rivers, runs through Zambia for about 1,000 kilometres. Zambia also lies in the centre of the Bantu-speaking area. Historically, Bantu languages became widely spoken in sub-Saharan Africa from around 300 BC, and present-day Zambia's Bantu languages are the result of several linguistic developments which introduced the languages spoken today through gradual processes of migration, language contact, and language shift over the last two millennia. From the late nineteenth century onwards, different European languages were introduced into what is now Zambia through missionary activities, in particular in education, and through colonial governance as a British colony. As a legacy of this period, English plays an important role in the current language situation, a role which was affirmed after independence in 1964, when English became the official language. After the change from a one-party system to multiparty democracy in 1991, emphasis has shifted towards the promotion of Zambia's seven national languages, Bemba, Nyanja, Tonga, Lozi, Lunda, Luvale, and Kaonde, and contemporary Zambia is an explicit example of a multilingual country. Questions of language and identity have played an important role throughout modern Zambian history, particularly after independence, when the question of the national identity of the new state took centre stage. Language in Zambia is important for national, political, and ethnic identities, for communication, education, and popular culture. The language situation in Zambia is in some respects similar to those in other African countries, but has its specific, local characteristics. In particular, the 16-Simpson-c16 OUP172-Simpson (Typeset by spi publisher services, Delhi) 295 of 313
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This book reminds readers that the study of language is also the study of all things negotiated through language. The collection's editor and authors approach language as a total social fact (The Gift, Marcel Mauss, Norton, 1967), offering texts rich in information about the role of language in African conflicts, educational policies, governance, and political history. In every chapter, these domains contrast, overlap, and congeal to show how language mirrors politics. After the Nigerian civil war (1967-70), for instance, "eastern minority groups" who previously might have come "within the Igbo orbit and spoken Igbo as an inter-ethnic lingua franca" opted instead for Nigerian Pidgin or Hausa in reaction to Igbo attempts at secession (Simpson & Oyètádé, p. 185). But the book's chapters also show how language determines politics. One need only recall that "the event that ultimately led to the arrival of democracy" in South Africa "through the escalation of wider protest it inspired" was a linguistic one: the Soweto riots, which protested the teaching of "Afrikaans in Black schools" (Mesthrie, p. 322). Exploring links between African languages and nationalism offers insights into more than these two themes alone, which makes this collection compelling and useful in multiple ways. Editor Andrew Simpson's introduction orients the volume toward its main topics by offering a typology of four prevailing sorts of African national language situations in which (1) a single indigenous language such as Amharic, Somali, or Swahili dominates; (2) a single European language like English or French prevails; (3) national multilingualism is the rule, as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, South Africa, and Zambia; or (4) an African lingua franca with unofficial national status such as Bambara or Wolof serves as the predominant means of communication (Simpson, pp. 18-22). Simpson also highlights the book's coverage of African pidgins, creoles, and "non-standard, localized forms of English and French" which are "important, growing language forces in a number of African states" (p. 11). The book then surveys in 16 chapters the language situations of nineteen African countries from every region of the continent. The chapters take a wide range of approaches in exploring the book's two central themes. Some authors critically note that the "language-national identity link. .. and its constituent members (language and nation) are a matter of construction" (Suleiman, p. 26) or that "there is no one-to-one link between ethnicity and language" (Skattum, p. 104). Others take for granted such categories as ethnicity, nation, and language as matters of political and linguistic pragmatism. They define a "cultural group," for example, as "an autonomous speech community"
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The Zimbabwean sociolinguistic situation has for long been dogged by the lack of a holistic and well-articulated language policy. This situation is not peculiar to Zimbabwe, but common throughout Africa. This article examines the implications and complications of the new constitutionally enshrined national language policy in Zimbabwe. To a larger extent, the new policy is a result of protracted activism by minority ethno-linguistic communities in Zimbabwe. However, the shift from recognising three official languages to sixteen would be an end itself if stakeholders do not proactively engage with the policy and develop effective strategies for successful implementation. Adequate financial resources, political will and stakeholder buy-in are needed for the successful implementation of this policy. This article maps the way forward for Zimbabwe's language policy and planning efforts.
The article illustrates a sociolinguistics of language vitality that accounts for 'minority' and unofficial languages across multiple localities in dispersed communities of multilingual speakers of Zambia where only seven out of seventy-three indigenous languages have been designated official and 'zoned' for use in specified regions. Using signage and narratives of place from selected rural and urban centres of the City of Lusaka and the City of Livingstone, we show how minority and non-official languages (some of which are unofficial and minor in region, but official in other regions) come to be part of the semiotic landscapes and social narratives of place outside legislated language 'zones'. We problematize intergenerational language vitality and endangerment frameworks and notions of linguistic performative identities and reciprocal bilingualism to suggest that the presence of 'out of place' languages in dispersed communities of speakers in multiple localities is indicative of the vitality of the languages concerned. We conclude that language revitalisa-tion frameworks need to consider alternative ways of language transmission focusing on mobile multisited and delocalised communities of speakers and their heteroglossic language practices. This means locating the languages or their fragmented forms in the spoken and written repertoire range of dispersed multilingual communities across multiple localities.