The Language of Decolonization and Things Fall Apart

Abstract

In Africa, where most countries experienced ruthless colonization by European imperialism, the language debates of African literature have become entangled with the tensional politics of the colonizer-and-colonized bondage. Due to the multi-linguistic peculiarity, some writers of Africa have been inflicted by the dilemma of language choice between the imposed language of the colonizer and the native language of the colonized. Representatively, Achebe claims that the transformed English should be enough to express African peculiarities; by contrast, Ngũgĩ strongly supports the radical proposition that, in any case, African creative writers must use their own indigenous languages. Advocating the view of language as activity, this essay will, at first, discuss the political and cultural ramifications of the language question in African literature, especially focusing on Ngũgĩ’s radical theory in comparison with Achebe’s more pragmatic and realistic solution to the dilemma of language choice. Secondly, by a brief analysis of Achebe’s masterpiece, Things Fall Apart, in relation to the language question, this essay attempts to expose both strengths and weaknesses of the contrasting positions of Achebe and Ngũgĩ.