Sociolinguistic Research in Africa

Abstract

Sociolinguistics is a recently developed subject of interdisciplinary study in the social sciences. Joseph H. Greenberg has indicated the scope of this field and its relevance to African studies in general in his contribution to Robert A. Lystad's The African World: A Survey of Social Research (New York, Praeger, 1965; p. 427). He includes in sociolinguistics such topics as “the relation of language differences to social class; the differential social roles of different languages co-existing in the same society; the development and spread of lingua francas as auxiliary languages in multilingual situations; the factors involved in the differential prestige ratings of languages; the role of language as a sign of ethnic identification; language in relation to nationalism; and problems of language policy, e.g., in education.” Africa, with its emerging nations, is an ideal area for such research, since the development of new nations entails problems which sociolinguistic studies are particularly fit to solve. Much of the linguistic work done in the colonial era and even in more recent years is inadequate, because of lack of reference to the relevant social context. With regard to this situation, the Committee on Sociolinguistic Research in Africa of the ARC considered it advisable to include in the January conference some topics which are usually handled under the headings of ethnolinguistics and psycholinguistics, e.g., the changes induced in one language by contact with another in the context of the general culture-contact situation, including its nonlinguistic aspects, and the problems of attitudes and behavior toward language.