Language In Contemporary African Cultures And Societies

Language in Contemporary African Cultures and Societies examines language in contemporary Africa by positioning language at the center of interrelationships between individuals, society, and culture. Because of how language permeates every aspect of human existence within each society, this book has assembled contributions by researchers and scholars who focus on different topics within African languages and cultures. By presenting African languages as resources and subject and subject of the study, this book discusses Africa’s multilingualism, language policy, preservation, and their uses in development, security, liberation, and identity formation in the diaspora. Based on empirical research and analysis of texts, this book takes a closer look at the continent and the diaspora by situating African languages, cultures, and literatures at the center, and shows how African languages are used in the liberation, transfer of knowledge, and promotion of literacy among Africans globally. It is a book that seeks to bridge the gap between the continent and the diaspora. All contributors are experienced scholars of language, literature, education and linguistics. The chapters provide a major means for examining the interplay of language, literature, and education.

This book provides an in-depth and comprehensive state-of-the-art study of 'African languages' and 'language in Africa' since its beginnings as a 'colonial science' at the turn of the twentieth century in Europe. Compiled by 56 internationally renowned scholars, this ground breaking study looks at past and current research on 'African languages' and 'language in Africa' under the impact of paradigmatic changes from 'colonial' to 'postcolonial' perspectives. It addresses current trends in the study of the role and functions of language, African and other, in pre- and postcolonial African societies. Highlighting the central role that the 'language factor' plays in postcolonial transformation processes of sociocultural modernization and economic development, it also addresses more recent, particularly urban, patterns of communication, and outlines applied dimensions of digitalization and human language technology.

European and African works have found it difficult to move past the image of Africa as a place of exotica and relentless brutality. This book explores the status and critical relationship between politics, culture, literary creativity, criticism, education and publishing in the context of promoting Africa’s indigenous knowledge, and seeks to recover some of the sites where Africans continue to elaborate conflicting politics of self-affirmations. It both acknowledges and steps outside the protocols of analysis informed by nationalism, differentiating the forms that postcolonial theories have taken, and arguing for a selective appropriation of theory that emerges from Africa’s lived experiences.

This book explores the instrumentality of language in constructing identity in contemporary society. The processes of globalization, hyper-mobility, rapid urbanization, and the increasing desire of local populations to be linked to the global community have created a pressing need to reconfigure identity in this new world order. Following the digital revolution, both traditional and new media are dissolving linguistic boundaries. The centrality of language in organizing communities and groups cannot be overstated: our social order is developed alongside our linguistic allegiance, shared narratives, collective memories, and common social history. Keeping in mind the fluidity of identity, the book brings together fourteen chapters providing cultural and social perspectives. The ideas reflected here draw on a range of disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, the politics of language, and linguistic identity.

This book tries to offer some insights into the relationship between language, culture, and identity in modern African and Asian contemporary societies. The viewpoints presented by well-known authors of this book focus on different perspectives towards this critical issue. They uncover ambiguous aspects involved in this area and provide many proofs that support the main purpose of writing this book. With the benefit of hindsight it is easy for readers of this book to see where authors went right and how this type of book has a certain cachet. A laborious task has been done to give its content a complete face-lift.

Drawing together scholars from communication, literature, philosophy, linguistics, and other fields, this edited collection examines the current thinking on African American literature and language. Some of the most significant writers and thinkers in the field have contributed their views on all major aspects of the topic. The widespread debate over the canon in American literature, the issue of cultural diversity, and the need to have books with critical inquiry into African American culture make this collection suitable for scholars and students in diverse fields.

Intended for those interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history, this work looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. It illustrates key themes in modern thinking about Africa's history with a range of historical examples.

This book is a powerful exploration of the role of women in the evolution of African thinking and narratives on development, from the precolonial period right through to the modern day. Whilst the book identifies women’s oppression and marginalization as significant challenges to contemporary Africa’s advancement, it also explores how new written narratives draw on traditional African knowledge systems to bring deep-rooted and sometimes radical approaches to progress. The book asserts that Africans must tell their own stories, expressed through the complex meanings and nuances of African languages and often conveyed through oral traditions and storytelling, in which women play an important role. The book’s close examination of language and meaning in the African narrative tradition advances the illumination and elevation of African storytelling as part of a viable and valid knowledge base in its own right, rather than as an extension of European paradigms and methods. Anthonia C. Kalu's new edition of this important book, fully revised throughout, will also include fresh analysis of the role of digital media, education, and religion in African narratives. At a time when the prominence and participation of African women in development and sociopolitical debates is growing, this book's exploration of their lived experiences and narrative contribution will be of interest to students of African literature, gender studies, development, history, and sociology.

The poor economic performance of some African countries since independence has been a major concern to both African leaders and policy makers. This volume, which draws together contributions from academics based in Africa and its diaspora, situates the continent within its historic and socio-political background: from the 1960s, the decade of independence, through to its development outlook as the new millennium unfolds. It examines a broad range of contemporary issues -- from development and culture to linguistics and is unique in identifying and examining issues that are common both to Africa and the diaspora.

Believing that the intellectual enterprise called philosophy is essentially a part of the cultural as well as historical experience of a people, that the concepts and problems that occupy the attention of philosophers placed in different cultural spaces or historical times generally derive directly from those spaces and times, and that philosophy, in turn, has been most relevant to the development of human cultures, the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye gives reflective attention in this book to some of the concepts and problems that in his view feature most prominently in the contemporary African cultural, social, political, and moral experience. Such concepts and problems include the following: political legitimacy, development, culture and the pursuit of science and technology, political corruption, democracy, representation and the politics of inclusion, the status of cultural values in national orientation, understanding globalization, and others. It is these topics that are covered in the essays collected in this book. The unrelenting pursuit of the speculative activity by the philosopher in most cases eventuates in normative proposals; these normative proposals often embody a vision-a vision of an ideal human society in terms of its values, politics, and culture. Vision, understood here, has human-not supernatural or divine-origination and involvement and requires action by human beings in order for it to come into reality. A vision may derive from sustained critical evaluation of a culture or some elements of it. Gyekye attempts an articulation of the visions of the essays contained in the book. Even though philosophical ideas and concerns are originally inspired by and worked out in a cultural milieu, it does not necessarily follow, Gyekye strongly believes, that the relevance of those ideas and insights is to be tetheed to the cultures that produced them. For, more often than not, the relevance of those ideas, or at least some of them, transcends the confines of their own times and cultures and can be appreciated by other societies, or cultures, or generational epochs. This trans-cultural or trans-epochal or meta-contextual appeal or attraction of philosophical ideas and insights spawned by a particular culture or cluster of cultures or in specific historical times is to be put down to our common human nature-including our basic human desires and aspirations. Thus, most of the essays published here should be of interest to the global community-i.e., to cultures and societies beyond the African.