Colonial Language Research Articles

Review of Jennings & Pfänder (2018): Inheritance and Innovation in a Colonial Language. Towards a Usage-Based Account of French Guianese Creole

Review of Jennings & Pfänder (2018): Inheritance and Innovation in a Colonial Language. Towards a Usage-Based Account of French Guianese Creole

Raising the profile of siSwati as a national language*

ABSTRACT The governing framework and national ethos of the Kingdom of Eswatini are grounded in the traditional culture of emaSwati (the people of Eswatini) and their language, siSwati. At the same time, economic success is tied to knowledge of English, the former colonial language of Eswatini, which is the language of government, the media, the judiciary and formal education. One outcome of this type of bilingualism is the relative marginalisation of large numbers of citizens whose command of English is limited. While siSwati remains alive through its use by emaSwati, there are concerns that, in the long term, the dominance of English in key domains could pose a threat to the survival of siSwati. This concern is reflected in the recent creation of a SiSwati Language Board by the Government of Eswatini. Drawing on research that suggests that inclusivity and language maintenance are linked, this paper proposes that the prestige of siSwati be enhanced within the English-based globally-oriented sector of emaSwati society through activities undertaken by the SiSwati Language Board, such as a project to produce a tagged digital corpus of siSwati texts from a wide variety of genres and a monolingual dictionary based on this corpus, parallel to the construction of such corpora by the ALLEX project at the University of Zimbabwe, as well as encouraging the expansion of siSwati into new genres as well. Such activities could contribute to raising the profile of siSwati as a language that merits the same study and attention afforded to more prestigious languages such as English.

From Africa to Jamaica and back: the Atlantic as a dynamic linguistic contact zone

This paper is concerned with Africa and the African Diaspora in Jamaica from a linguistic perspective. It will shed light on linguistic and communicative practices which illustrate the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between Africa and the Caribbean. My objective is to go beyond the approach of traditional (Caribbean) creolistics, which usually investigates African “substrate” influences in so-called creole languages, and to look at the Atlantic contact area as a dynamic zone with mutual and multidirectional influences. This will involve not only the historical dimension of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, through which the African Diaspora in Jamaica, the Caribbean, and the Americas emerged in the first place, but also a focus on the role of the dynamicity of current language practices on identity, language ideologies, linguistic creativity, and agency. An important aspect in this respect is the emblematicity of African elements, as linguistic elements, which are different from ‘Standard English’ (often perceived as the colonial language and the language of the slave master and oppressor), and which are marked in the context of conscious linguistic choices. Moreover, there is an awareness of the African heritage in Jamaican language practices that informs conscious efforts to use African linguistic elements (for instance, names). For many Jamaicans, their African heritage and identity play an important role. This can be observed, in particular, in Rastafari discourses and in Reggae music and culture, which emphasize a strong focus on Africa. These phenomena are also relevant in (Anglophone) Africa, where Jamaican linguistic practices are adopted through the influence of Reggae, Dancehall, and Rastafari. Therefore, this contribution will also feature some examples of how influences from the Diaspora come back to Africa, for example, in music and youth language practices.

Indigenous-language Media Research in Africa: Gains, Losses, Towards a New Research Agenda

ABSTRACT Research on indigenous-language media in Africa is often neglected for several reasons, such as an obsession with research on mainstream media that uses colonial languages of English, French and Portuguese and a general lack of scholarly interest. This semi-systematic review paper looks at the research trajectory of the last two decades, identifying gaps and proposing a new research agenda. Available research conducted from a cultural studies and critical theory perspective reveals the intersection of indigenous-language media with gender and health communication; democracy and development; economics and management; and digitalisation. A broadened new research agenda that follows the critical theory tradition is proposed to critique the dominance of mainstream media together with a decolonial reform agenda that appreciates the importance of indigenous-language media in Africa. Research highlighting new case studies, representations, audiences, business models, innovation and digital journalism by indigenous-language media is proposed.

Developing a Social Critique of Hegemony of English

The language pyramid in the post-colonial territories as propounded by Melchers and Shaw in 2003 aptly reflects on the status of different languages in Pakistan. At the top is English, with its heritage as a colonial language. Then is the ‘national’ language Urdu which has nationalist value and is spoken by the majority as a lingua franca; while at the bottom of this hierarchy are the regional languages and their dialects. This hierarchy of languages has deeper repercussions enrooting stratification based on social class and commodification of languages. In this paper, this claim is substantiated by semiotic analysis of a social media text− an amateur video clip that went viral on Facebook in January 2021− in which owners of a high-end cafe in Islamabad mock their manager’s English. The video is only the tip of the iceberg of the symbolic and linguistic capitals of English in Pakistan. This analysis is further pleaded by the literature on the critical approach to language policy and planning (LPP). This critical approach can be traced back to the 1980s and Tollefson’s oft-cited book in 1991 that endeavors to situate LPP as a part of ongoing conflicts between the elites and the common masses. He regards that the evolution of the critical approach has widened its scope rendering it primarily sociocultural, dealing with the dynamics of status and prestige. Thus stated, this research attempts to converge the critical relational theory of Bourdieu with semiotics to address this issue of class discrimination based on the hegemony of English in Pakistan through a multimethodological approach.

French and Kreyòl in multilingual Haiti: insights on the relationship between language attitudes, language policy, and literacy from Haitian Gonâviens

ABSTRACT This targeted, qualitative study examines language attitudes, educational language policy, and literacy in an underrepresented segment of Haiti’s multilingual society. Drawing on decolonizing theory, we take a critical stance, arguing that colonial language ideologies that privilege French and disempower Kreyòl are reproduced in the marginalization of Kreyòl in Haitian schools, which results in low literacy levels and exacerbates postcolonial power dynamics and socioeconomic inequalities. Most Haitians are monolingual speakers of Kreyòl, but most schooling is conducted in French, a language spoken only by an elite minority. Previous studies on Creolophones’ language attitudes have not focused on beliefs about community language use and have excluded the voices of Haitians who are non-urban and who have basic literacy or are illiterate. This study is an important first step in addressing this gap. Thirteen participant interviews were analyzed using content analysis. Findings revealed a complex set of attitudes and orientations toward Kreyòl, French, and educational language policy, with participants at times resisting and at times aligning with colonial ideologies. Overall, the majority displayed positive language attitudes toward Kreyòl as a language of cultural identity, and believed Kreyòl should be used for literacy education. Preliminary implications for language policy and future research are discussed.

Catching the Disc: Panopticism, Surveillance and Punishment as a Pedagogical Tool in the Acquisition of Colonial Languages in Post-Colonial Schooling

ABSTRACT This article analyses the use of ‘the disc’ – a curious pedagogical post-colonial artifact, intended to discourage native languages – a tool employed in teaching colonial languages in schools in parts of the post-colonial world. The disc assumes many forms depending on where it is employed, but it is usually an object fashioned to be carried, or worn as an article of clothing, or a cap making it reminiscent of the Dunce Cap. The role of the disc and its variants is the same: to leverage surveillance and shaming and channel them towards the purposes of instilling school discipline, promoting moral education and often as a pedagogical tool. However, the use of shame for these purposes has since fallen out of favour in the West (Stearns & Stearns 2017). Using Michel Foucault’s notion of panopticism to illuminate the workings of this artifact, this article focuses on shedding some light on the indignities suffered by speakers of native languages in such post-colonial school systems. As Foucault (1980, 30) wrote, power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions, attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives. This article’s main gist is on this one aspect of colonial legacy in education: the language policies that put a premium on mastery of colonial over native languages. Among the issues typical in post-colonial discourse, this vestige represents apt exemplification of deleterious aspects of colonialism that continue to present perverse challenges in post-colonial societies. It however concurs, in spite of the blistering critique of the emphasis on colonial language use, and in light of a rapidly globalising world, with Kevin Forster’s (2003) analysis, which concludes that in instances where contemporary values like empowerment and perfection is gained while sacrificing autonomy and freedom from surveillance, subjugation could be seen as worthwhile.

The grammar and rhetoric of African subjectivity: ethics, image, and language

ABSTRACT This article advances existing studies on ethics, image, and language in rhetoric by offering three key interventions. First, ethics, a reasonable rhetorical practice that enables informed decisions, does not respond to colonial ethics that constructs West Africans as nonhumans, hence the need for an onto-logical ethics that affirms West Africans as reasonably human. Second, decoloniality offers an alternative visual rhetorical model to the common visual perception of Africa that blurs Africans and their essences, a gap that often denies Africans their subject positions, and that almost always gets theorized away in visual rhetoric and communication studies. Third, colonial language—however Africans claim to own it for their rhetorical and creative purposes—almost always expands and advances its linguistic imprint and empiric presence on the users of the language in Africa.

Flipping the Script on Colonial Narratives: Replicating Roman Reliefs from the Antonine Wall

Our understanding of the Roman presence in Scotland during the second century has traditionally been viewed through a Roman lens, influenced by the fragmentary, non-contemporaneous, and heavily biased accounts of Roman historiographers. Perceived wisdom has perpetuated this through embedded colonial language referring to indigenous occupants of the region and in the way that colonial objects are presented in museums. The welcome paradigm shift from Romanization to postcolonial discourses provides fertile ground for challenging Romanocentric narratives when (re)considering the materiality of Empire, particularly from frontier contexts. Replicas are an integral component of this narrative with power to express multiplicities of meanings and engage audiences in new and creative ways. These aspects are explored through newly carved sandstone replicas of Antonine Wall Distance Sculptures, including one inspired by the originals but presenting an alternative, provocative narrative from the perspective of Iron Age occupants of the region who came into conflict with Rome.

Autonomy, Mobility, and Identity: The Re Tamuning of Guam, 1869–1901

ABSTRACT Between 1869–1901, a community of migrants from the Central Carolinian atoll of Namonuito made a new home on the periphery of Agaña, the colonial capital of the Spanish Marianas. Named Tamuning, the enclave was founded as part of a wider series of northward migrations from the Central Carolines. The people of Tamuning perpetuated a collective identity as Refaluwasch – called carolinos or Carolinians in two colonial languages – which distinguished them from the rest of Guamanian society. Being carolino constituted a claim to communal autonomy and interisland mobility. The people of Tamuning, while nominally subordinate to the governor in Agaña, were not restricted to Guam and found opportunities across the transition from Spanish to US or German rule. As a microhistory of transoceanic migration, imperial transition, and identity-making in the western Pacific, the history of Tamuning captures the dynamism and resilience of Refaluwasch institutions of leadership and kinship across multiple colonial regimes.

The influence of colonial languages on language policies of francophone sub-Saharan Africa

Language as part of the colonial heritage has and will still stand as a challenge to the development of African languages and even bigger challenge facing language policies makers in African countries. As part of the former French colonial empire, Africa is now the most French speaking continent on the planet. In Sub-Saharan Africa in particular, although rich with numerous ethnic groups and thus languages, lots of its countries at the independence chose French as one of or the only official language of the country. This research endeavor sets out to analyze the language question in Africa, most particularly sub-Saharan African French speaking countries history and language situation, in a bid to understand the impact of French as official language on these countries’ language policy and planning, analyze efforts made by some of these countries in terms of policy and planning of national languages, and possibly offer some perspectives on language planning and policy in sub-Saharan African French speaking nations.

LINGUISTIC SITUATION AS THE DEVELOPMENT FACTOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEXICOGRAPHY IN INDIA: THE BRITISH RAJ PERIOD

The given paper features the second part of the extended research focused on the investigation of the linguistic situation as a development factor of the English language lexicography in India. Thus, in this article the main parameters of the linguistic situation during the British Raj period, with English being the case study, are scanned. The diachronic approach used towards the analysis of the linguistic situation constituencies elicits certain stability of quantitative, qualitative and evaluative parameters as regards local languages in India and the pivotal changes as regards English. The English language quantitative parameter mirrors the fluctuation in demographic rate, national identity and professional occupancy of English speaking population in India during the Raj period. The qualitative parameter of linguistic situation being enriched by another Indo-European language, maintains its multilingual, heterogeneous and unbalanced features. The English language evaluative parameter reveals the main stages of the colonial language incorporation into the linguistic situation in the country. English in India goes through the perception as the language of traders and missionaries into its adoption as а means of education obtainment, social stability access and interaction mechanisms both with foreigners and citizenry of other multilingual country regions. Such position of English in colonial India prompts the alteration of its functional characteristics with political, pedagogical and lingua franca functions being the most essential. Their actualization is only feasible due to the flourish of lexicographic practice in colonial India. Thus, the English language serves the base for a number of glossaries, bilingual and explanatory dictionaries describing various lexical layers of English in India.

Multilingualism and climate justice: The role of linguistic diversity in environmental conservation

AbstractThis commentary examines environmental conservation work as a site of climate (in)justice, drawing from fieldwork at a highly multilingual Cameroonian wildlife sanctuary, as well as prior work on linguistic diversity, language ideologies, and intercultural communication. Across the world, climate justice work is occurring in landscapes that are often linguistically diverse. Alongside indigenous languages, global lingua francas (predominantly (ex)‐colonial languages) play a central role in facilitating communication between government officials, foreign NGO workers and volunteers, and people living in areas undergoing conservation. In these contexts, beliefs about language and communication – as well as unequal access or fluency in particular languages — can serve to magnify racialized and (neo)colonial hierarchies. While work in environmental anthropology has taken an ethnographic approach to understanding conflicts and miscommunication between the different actors involved in environmental conservation, this commentary argues that the methodologies of sociolinguistics and related fields are uniquely situated to examine in detail the interactions, language choices, and ideologies involved in designing and implementing climate justice work, and the impact these have on how this work is carried out.

Two types of language contact involving English Creoles

The two African English-lexifier Creole languages Krio (Sierra Leone) and Pichi (Equatorial Guinea) are closely related. A close look at specific aspects of their grammar, however, shows divergence due to differing contact ecologies since their split in the 19thcentury. Krio has been spoken alongside itslexifier(the main lexicon-providing language) andsuperstrate(the socially dominant colonial language) English since its beginnings and Pichi alongside its superstrate Spanish for almost two centuries, but not alongside English. Resulting differences in contact outcomes transpire in the expression of tense, aspect, and mood, and the use of prepositions for the marking of participants. In these two areas, Krio has converged more with English than Pichi with Spanish because existing overlaps between Creole and lexifier forms have facilitated transfer from English. There is therefore evidence for different contact outcomes in Creoles depending on whether they continue to be in contact with a superstrate that is simultaneously the lexifier (in this case English), or not. No previous work has compared Krio and Pichi nor looked at these two Creole languages from the viewpoint of their differing linguistic ecologies and their resulting differentiation.

A worksheet, a whiteboard, a teacher-learner: leveraging materials and colonial language frames for multimodal indigenous language learning

ABSTRACT The growing demand for Indigenous language education in the United States often relies on community teachers with widely varying proficiencies as part of local language reclamation efforts. While these English-dominant ‘teacher-learners’ play a central role in the success of classroom-based K-12 language programs, their classroom experiences and practices have received little attention in second language acquisition research. I address this gap in the literature by examining an English-dominant Ojibwe teacher-learner’s pedagogical practices in an English-dominant tribal school. I theorise the use of colonial language and materials by relying on linguistic ethnography’s multi-scalar approach to language in use as well as a focus on sign-makers’ transformations of local resources. Findings show how the teacher-learner’s reliance on relational knowledge and colonial language framing scaffolds translingual practices and opens up discursive space for learners to experiment, play, and learn. This study highlights how one teacher-learner negotiates the ideological and material conditions that shape the learning and use of an Indigenous language within a colonial institution (school) that has long been a tool of assimilation and erasure.

The path to decoloniality: A proposal for educational system transformation

It was observed that in all circles of discussion, Africans talk about decolonisation and turning away from systems that favour the West in disfavour of Africans. Thinkers like Molefi K. Asante, Chukwunyere, and others have approached this matter of decolonisation at an angle of Afrocentrism. They intend to present African views from an undiluted African perspective. However, within that struggle, it is quite noticeable that the African basic education system has not done sufficient work to decolonise the presentation of African thoughts. There is a noticeable overrating of foreign languages like English and Afrikaans in terms of subjects or modules taught in South African schools and tertiary institutions. As it is, Sciences national papers are delivered to schools written in two languages, which are not aboriginal in Africa, i.e. English and Afrikaans, regardless of the province where they are delivered to. Within that backdrop, it becomes questionable whether African language practitioners are incapable of producing tools to Africanize the language of learning or the colonial languages refuse to forsake the African educational system. This conceptual study is set forth to explore decoloniality in the education sector and argue for the use of African languages as a mode of instruction in learning and promoting them to be at the same level of honour as those overvalued western languages. In this study, analytic critical theory is used to apply criticality and rationality, which guided the researchers to be more inclined towards reason than emotionality over this dire issue.

Decolonising the postgraduate diploma in higher education curriculum at one university of technology in South Africa

The aim of this theoretical article is to explain efforts at decolonising the Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education (PGDHE) curriculum at a university of technology (UoT) in South Africa. The main source of information was collected through relevant secondary data. The cost of continuing with Western knowledge organisation in the PGDHE programme destroys and undervalues African intellectualism, culture and literature, while imposing colonial language through prescribed texts. We argue that a clear understanding of decolonisation of the curriculum is necessary, to avoid the risk of implementing changes that will result in superficial alterations, rather than an inclusive curriculum that accentuates African intellectualism. The article recommends that a discourse around decolonisation should be sustained at all levels of the institution in re-thinking and re-evaluating the modules offered in the PGDHE programme to ensure they become more inclusive.

Language Subjects: Placing Derrida\u2019s Monolingualism in Global Education

Derrida’s autobiographical and philosophical text Monolingualism of the Other; or, the Prosthesis of Origin is a partial recounting of his own childhood and upbringing in Algeria at a time when it was a colony of France. It is on one level a reflection on matters related to colonialism, and especially on the effects of the imposition of colonial language upon schooling and wider practices of education and coming into the world. Yet Derrida’s text also opens onto structural questions about estrangement, unsettledness and Unheimlichkeit such as they pertain to and characterise life in language more generally. This paper puts Derrida’s Monolingualism of the Other into relation with contemporary discussions of multilingualism and language learning in the context of the global education agenda. The result, as we shall see, is the destabilising of assumptions that underpin multilingualism and the global education agenda and foreclose their democratic and ethical aims. At the same time, as we shall also see, Derrida’s text opens ways in which the education of language subjects can be reconstructed in relation to a new conception of ethics and the humanities.

Untranslatable Characters: James Clarence Mangan and the English Language

ABSTRACT Language still is a hotly debated topic in postcolonial circles. Both academics and writers strive to define which language should be used in postcolonial contexts and the impact of such choice. Two tendencies are prevalent. Detractors of the colonisers’ tongue argue that using colonial languages offers a continuum of the colonial quest, reproducing its mindset and hierarchy. Defendants of deploying colonial languages as abrogation tools assert these offer a twofold opportunity: the language expresses the nuances of postcolonial societies while reaching wider audiences. Despite its ethnographic peculiarities, Ireland is no exception to this dichotomy. The discussion has, however, mainly focused on Irish writers’ recent productions, to the exclusion of the early nineteenth century. By analysing James Clarence Mangan's attitude to language in his writings, this study shed some light on an area which deserves further study, contributing to the overall understanding of how postcolonial writers counter colonial constructions via language.

LITERACY AND ORALITY: BETWEEN ABROGATION AND APPROPRIATION IN NGUGI WA THIONG’O’S THE RIVER BETWEEN

Colonizers have used language as an instrument of socio-political and economic control during colonisation. This has enabled them in the process to establish power hierarchy based mostly on linguistic superiority by undermining native tongues. In recent years, theories of postcolonial discourses hold the view that colonialism has fundamentally affected modes of representation of colonised spaces. Through questioning and travestying western hegemonic discourses, writers from once colonised spaces have challenged and subverted the hegemonic power of the colonial language by inserting different strategies into their own language to suit socio-cultural contexts. For postcolonial literary artists, this consists in taking the language of the former imperial power, to unlearn its worldview and re-place it in a discourse fully adapted to ones’ own space and subsequently, produce new modes of representation in countering colonial canonical texts. In this sense, postcolonial discourse is crystallised by and replete with ‘abrogation’ and ‘appropriation’ in the canon of postcolonial studies. This suggests the writer’s use of linguistic structure of the borrowed language, the manipulation of its syntactical structure as well as its semantics, to convey stance against the colonizer. In its pronouncement, an effort is made to advocate for a critical rethinking of the legacies of colonial domination as well as its accompanying epistemologies. Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o uses elements of oral tradition (orality) or better indigenous poetics in his fictional works, mostly The River Between, to express the meanings, feelings and experiences of his Gikuyu people. Thus, orality as a means of communication and carrier of the culture of those people to whom it is a mother tongue, has social, cultural, and political aesthetic roles to play in the African worldview. To achieve this, Ngugi employs historically significant events, moments and stylistic features which are characteristics of oral tradition to emphasise important key concepts that help to reconstruct positive moral values in conflict with foreign ones in a fragmented Kenyan society. Though many controversies surround Ngugi’s writing and its medium of reception, this paper contends that his fictions written in his mother tongue or in English and/or translated into English, are part and parcel of his endeavour to appropriate the literary enterprise not only as a weapon of active physical revolt and textual indignation but also as against (post)colonial pathologies. Ngugi refashions the colonial English language to show that his country, Kenya, is not a mere passive entity in tolerating colonial legacies; but challenges western hegemonic power dimensions, dismantles them to the point of bringing them under its own terms and conditions. The conceptual frameworks that underpin the study are New historicism (New Culturalism) and postcolonial theory. 
 
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