Afriphone Literature as a Prototypical form of African Literature: Insights from Prototype Theory

Adams Bodomo

doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.7n.5p.262

Abstract

What is the most prototypical form of African literature? Shouldn’t we be using African languages to produce African literary texts, shouldn’t we produce more Afriphone African literature compared to Europhone African literature or Afro-Europhone literature? This issue underlies the reality that the vast majority of African writers presumably think in one language and express themselves (speak, enchant, or write) in another. This problematic, crystalized in major debates between Ngugi wa Thiongo and others, on the one hand, and Chinua Achebe and others, on the other hand, has resulted in great challenges as to how we can define or even conceptualize the discipline of African literature. Is it literature written by Africans in African languages for Africans or is it literature written by anybody including non-Africans in non-African languages? Or is it somewhere in-between these two extremes? The paper discusses several positions on this major question in African literature before advancing a novel proposal based on insights and evidence from proto-type theory within Linguistics and the Cognitive Sciences. This proposal leads to a somewhat provocative conclusion about the gradation of African literatures, where African language literatures or Afrophone literatures, comprise the core, proto-typical category in a 21 st Century African literature constellation, whereas foreign language and diasporic literatures such as Afro-European literatures , Afro-American literatures , and Afro-Chinese literatures are the hybrid and thus more recessive, peripheral types of African literature. Keywords: Afriphone literature, African language literature, African literature, proto-type theory, linguistics, cognitive Science

Highlights

What is African literature?Literature has many definitions and conceptualizations but it usually involves a form of artistic creation by an individual or group of individuals with language (written, spoken, or enchanted) that attempts to represent some conceptualization of a possible world, real or imagined
What is the most prototypical form of African literature? Shouldn’t we be using African languages to produce African literary texts, shouldn’t we produce more Afriphone African literature compared to Europhone African literature or Afro-Europhone literature? This issue underlies the reality that the vast majority of African writers presumably think in one language and express themselves in another
More specific questions include the following: Are English, French and other foreign languages appropriate for Africa literature? Can we still refer to a piece of work as African literature if it is not written in an African language? Two major positions, each representing either side of the debate, are often advanced

Summary

What is African literature?

Literature has many definitions and conceptualizations but it usually involves a form of artistic creation by an individual or group of individuals with language (written, spoken, or enchanted) that attempts to represent some conceptualization of a possible world, real or imagined. All the books are written in the non-African languages English and French The acceptance of these as works of African literature would depend on how we answer the questions posed throughout this paper. From the above confrontation between Achebe and Ngugi we see that the vast majority of Africans speak one language and write in an entirely different language This issue underlies what the Ivorian writer, Amadou Kourouma, terms as 'diplosie' 43), the reality that the vast majority of African writers presumably think in one language and express themselves (speak, enchant, or write) in another It looks as if we are in a dichotomous situation, an “either...or” situation where African literature is defined in terms of whether or not a piece of writing is truly African literature depending on its medium of expression.

Categorization

Prototype Theory of Categorization

Findings

Conclusion