Abstract

This chapter examines the use of language to colonize from a slightly different angle. Most postcolonial debates focus on the imposition of the colonizer's language on the colonized, its impact on the colonized and the strategies of resistance, but it analysis the use of the languages of the colonized to subjugate them. The chapter also examines 'the colonization of local language[s]' such that they no longer serve the interest of their original cultures, but indeed, become weapons that victimize the original speakers. This examination will look at the translations and definitions of words in the Setswana Bible and dictionaries, which were first carried out by London Missionary Society agents between 1829 and 1925. The chapter reveals how the uncovering of the political voice of the Gerasene demoniac by setting it within the dynamics of empire has, in this case, obfuscated the presence of the demonic elements of the story.Keywords: colonizer's language; hermeneutics; postcolonial analysis

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