Download or read book Papers on Language and Culture written by Mary Nyambura Muchiri and published by . This book was released on 2009-05 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of the papers reproduced here have either been presented at a national or international conference, and some have been published elsewhere. I have obtained permission to republish because I think it is important to have them all together. The idea came to me when I was asked, during an interview, why I wrote on such different topics as part of my scholarship. The question was based on the different publications in which the person asking had found them. I had to explain that they are all on language and culture, two areas that are closely interrelated. It occurred to me that having all the papers published in one volume would help show how they relate to one another, and thereby provide a more meaningful dialogue on the general topic. I therefore hope that although each paper stands alone, use of cross-referencing will provide a cumulative effect that is impossible when the papers are read as separate publications. The last chapter is not a paper in the traditional sense, in that it is just a list of words. However, it adds to the reader's understanding of the Kikuyu language. The semantic domains are a people group's way of understanding, categorizing and labeling the world around them. I hope it will be especially important as a source for future scholars who will want to analyze the culture and thought processes of their ancestors.
Download or read book Papers on Language and Culture an African Perspective written by Mary Nyambura Muchiri and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of the papers reproduced here have either been presented at a national or international conference, and some have been published elsewhere. I have obtained permission to republish because I think it is important to have them all together. The idea came to me when I was asked, during an interview, why I wrote on such different topics as part of my scholarship. The question was based on the different publications in which the person asking had found them. I had to explain that they are all on language and culture, two areas that are closely interrelated. It occurred to me that having all the papers published in one volume would help show how they relate to one another, and thereby provide a more meaningful dialogue on the general topic. I therefore hope that although each paper stands alone, use of cross-referencing will provide a cumulative effect that is impossible when the papers are read as separate publications. The last chapter is not a paper in the traditional sense, in that it is just a list of words. However, it adds to the readers understanding of the Kikuyu language. The semantic domains are a people groups way of understanding, categorizing and labeling the world around them. I hope it will be especially important as a source for future scholars who will want to analyze the culture and thought processes of their ancestors.
Download or read book Language in Contemporary African Cultures and Societies written by Leonard Muaka and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2018-12-03 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language in Contemporary African Cultures and Societies examines language in contemporary Africa by positioning language at the center of interrelationships between individuals, society, and culture. Because of how language permeates every aspect of human existence within each society, this book has assembled contributions by researchers and scholars who focus on different topics within African languages and cultures. By presenting African languages as resources and subject and subject of the study, this book discusses Africa’s multilingualism, language policy, preservation, and their uses in development, security, liberation, and identity formation in the diaspora. Based on empirical research and analysis of texts, this book takes a closer look at the continent and the diaspora by situating African languages, cultures, and literatures at the center, and shows how African languages are used in the liberation, transfer of knowledge, and promotion of literacy among Africans globally. It is a book that seeks to bridge the gap between the continent and the diaspora. All contributors are experienced scholars of language, literature, education and linguistics. The chapters provide a major means for examining the interplay of language, literature, and education.
Download or read book Essays on Language Communication and Literature in Africa written by Joyce T. Mathangwane and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-08 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays on Language, Communication and Literature in Africa explores language choice questions, together with domain-driven lingua-communicative and literary resources situated within the discourses of law, culture, medicine, visual art, politics, the media, music and literature in Africa. It identifies the distinctive African paraphernalia of these discourses, and foregrounds their real-world and mediated cultural and societal values, and highlights the Western presence through the inclusion of aspects of Shakespearean perspectives which bear universal tidings and speak to the African gender tradition. The chapters’ attention to verbal and visual artistic communicative mechanisms underlines such engagements as multilingualism policies, socio-political declension, social dynamism and cultural interventions that characterise the African setting. These realities are discussed in impressive detail, authoritative scholastic depth and effective stylistic tones that reflect the authors’ familiarity with the facets of African societies deducible from language, communication and literature.
Download or read book Multilingualism and Intercultural Communication written by H. Ekkehard Wolff and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2017-05-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth look at the changing sociolinguistic dynamics that have influenced South African society. To date, there has been no published textbook which takes into account changing sociolinguistic dynamics that have influenced South African society. Multilingualism and Intercultural Communication breaks new ground in this arena. The scope of this book ranges from macro-sociolinguistic questions pertaining to language policies and their implementation (or non-implementation) to micro-sociolinguistic observations of actual language-use in verbal interaction, mainly in multilingual contexts of Higher Education (HE). There is a gradual move for the study of language and culture to be taught in the context of (professional) disciplines in which they would be used, for example, Journalism and African languages, Education and African languages, etc. The book caters for this growing market. Because of its multilingual nature, it caters to English and Afrikaans language speakers, as well as the Sotho and Nguni language groups _ the largest languages in South Africa [and also increasingly used in the context of South African Higher Education]. It brings together various inter-linked disciplines such as Sociolinguistics and Applied Language Studies, Media Studies and Journalism, History and Education, Social and Natural Sciences, Law, Human Language Technology, Music, Intercultural Communication and Literary Studies. The unique cross-cutting disciplinary features of the book will make it a must-have for twenty-first century South African students and scholars and those interested in applied language issues.
Download or read book African Print Cultures written by Derek Peterson and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2016-09-29 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays collected in African Print Cultures claim African newspapers as subjects of historical and literary study. Newspapers were not only vehicles for anticolonial nationalism. They were also incubators of literary experimentation and networks by which new solidarities came into being. By focusing on the creative work that African editors and contributors did, this volume brings an infrastructure of African public culture into view. The first of four thematic sections, “African Newspaper Networks,” considers the work that newspaper editors did to relate events within their locality to happenings in far-off places. This work of correlation and juxtaposition made it possible for distant people to see themselves as fellow travellers. “Experiments with Genre” explores how newspapers nurtured the development of new literary genres, such as poetry, realist fiction, photoplays, and travel writing in African languages and in English. “Newspapers and Their Publics” looks at the ways in which African newspapers fostered the creation of new kinds of communities and served as networks for public interaction, political and otherwise. The final section, “Afterlives, ” is about the longue durée of history that newspapers helped to structure, and how, throughout the twentieth century, print allowed contributors to view their writing as material meant for posterity.
Download or read book Africa and Its Diaspora Languages Literature and Culture written by Olanike Ola Orie and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The text celebrates the academic achievements of Professor Olasope Oyelaran. It brings together over 20 papers by an international group of scholars on African diaspora languages, literatures and culture, representing four generations, all of whom have been influenced by Oyelaran’s work in one way or another. Edited by three African scholars in the USA, UK, and Nigeria, the volume presents current research on topics in applied- and socio-linguistics, phonology, morphology, syntax, oral and written literature, and Yoruba language and culture in African diasporas in Brazil, Cuba, and Trinidad. The constellation of topics presented here will enlarge the reader’s understanding of a number of issues in the field of African and African diaspora languages, literatures, and cultures today. As such, the book makes an important contribution to the expanding work on the linguistic and cultural interface of Africa and its Brazilian, Cuban, and Trinidadian diasporas.
Download or read book Literacy and Linguistic Diversity in a Global Perspective written by Neville Alexander and published by Council of Europe. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication reflects the outcomes of a project which brought together experts and practitioners in the field of linguistic diversity and literacy from European and African countries with a view to opening a dialogue, to taking a comparative perspective and defining possible areas of mutually enriching co-operation and exchange. The question of promoting low-status and non-dominant languages in education is the core concern of contributions in this volume which also encompasses topics such as language awareness, stimulating and encouraging a reading culture in low-status languages and developing criteria for teaching and learning materials that respect linguistic diversity and promote multilingualism. Examples of good practice in valuing African languages include an awareness raising campaign in Cameroon, NGO activities promoting literary production in Senegalese languages, the Stories Across Africa Project (StAAf) as well as initiatives of North-South cooperation in the fields of teacher training and materials development. This publication was conceptualised as a contribution to the African Union's Year of African Languages 2006/07.
Download or read book Language in Post Colonial Worlds An Intellectual and Cultural Decolonization written by Ahmed Musa and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Academic Paper from the year 2021 in the subject African Studies - Linguistics, grade: 95, , language: English, abstract: This paper deals with the questions of language, intellectual and cultural decolonization in post colonial worlds. The concern with cultural decolonization hails from different academic spheres, and as well as different geographical settings that either experienced European colonialism like in Africa, Asia or, from geographies with masses who were subjected to a forceful removal and enslavement and subsequently ferried from their indigenous homelands to Europe or America. To decolonize culture in this context primarily means, to liberate language, identity, and the intellectual constellation of the colonized communities from the colonial experience that some/many believe to have suppressed and subjugated their cultural identities.
Download or read book Democracy and Culture written by Lioba Moshi and published by Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd. This book was released on 2008-03-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the end of the Cold War, Africa has witnessed a political rebirth and second liberation as decades of autocracy and dictatorship became gradually replaced by a new wave of democratization and plural political competition. This political rebirth has revived the Afro-optimism that accompanied the independence decade of the 1960s. This optimism, however, co-exists with protracted and deadly conflicts in many parts of the continent - from wars in Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia, to stalemate in democratic reform in Niger, Guinea and Cameroon, and democratic retraction in Uganda. Additionally, Africa faces many problems including wars, famine, refugees, internal displacement and a host of diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Similarly, despite the adoption of constitutions that guarantee the basic human rights and freedoms by many African states, human rights violations remain rampant throughout the continent's political landscape. Democracy and Culture: An African Perspective is an analysis of the democracy project in Africa. Basically the contributors seek answers to a number of fundamental questions: How is democracy to be defined in the African context? Is the Western style democracy which is being adopted in many parts of Africa culturally and environmentally neutral? Can it really be replicated in Africa? And what is the role of African culture in the current democracy project?
Download or read book Cultural Universals and Particulars written by Kwasi Wiredu and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Wiredu's discussion of culturally defined values and concepts, as well as his attention to such timely issues as human rights, makes this book invaluable interdisciplinary reading." —D. A. Masolo Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu confronts the paradox that while Western cultures recoil from claims of universality, previously colonized peoples, seeking to redefine their identities, insist on cultural particularities. Wiredu asserts that universals, rightly conceived on the basis of our common biological identity, are not incompatible with cultural particularities and, in fact, are what make intercultural communication possible. Drawing on aspects of Akan thought that appear to diverge from Western conceptions in the areas of ethics and metaphysics, Wiredu calls for a just reappraisal of these disparities, free of thought patterns corrupted by a colonial mentality. Wiredu's exposition of the principles of African traditional philosophy is not purely theoretical; he shows how certain aspects of African political thought may be applied to the practical resolution of some of Africa's most pressing problems.
Download or read book Readings in African American Language written by Nathaniel Norment and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2003 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Readings in African American Language: Aspects, Features, and Perspectives, Volume 2 brings together scholars who research various theoretical approaches of the origin, characteristics, and development of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The advantages of AAVE, codeswitching, dialect interference in writing, theories, and politics in AAVE, text analysis, and critical pedagogy all are discussed in this volume. Each article provides a different perspective attesting to the vitality and relevance of African American language as an academic, social, and cultural/linguistic entry in the field of language studies.
Download or read book Dialectical Perspectives on Media Health and Culture in Modern Africa written by Akwala, Alfred O. and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2020-10-30 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Communication plays a critical role in enhancing social, cultural, and business relations. Research on media, language, and cultural studies is fundamental in a globalized world because it illuminates the experiences of various populations. There is a need to develop effective communication strategies that will be able to address both health and cultural issues globally. Dialectical Perspectives on Media, Health, and Culture in Modern Africa is a collection of innovative research on the impact of media and especially new media on health and culture. While highlighting topics including civic engagement, gender stereotypes, and interpersonal communication, this book is ideally designed for university students, multinational organizations, diplomats, expatriates, and academicians seeking current research on how media, health, and culture can be appropriated to overcome the challenges that plague the world today.
Download or read book The Power of Babel written by Ali AlʼAmin Mazrui and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-08-03 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linguists estimate that there are currently nearly 2,000 languages in Africa, a staggering figure that is belied by the relatively few national languages. While African national politics, economics, and law are all conducted primarily in the colonial languages, the cultural life of the majority of citizens is conducted in a bewildering Babel of local and regional dialects, making language itself the center of debates over multiculturalism, gender studies, and social theory. In The Power of Babel, the noted Africanist scholar Ali Mazrui and linguist Alamin Mazrui explore this vast territory of African language. The Power of Babel is one of the first comprehensive studies of the complex linguistic constellations of Africa. It draws on Ali Mazrui's earlier work in its examination of the "triple heritage" of African culture, in which indigenous, Islamic, and Western traditions compete for influence. In bringing the idea of the triple heritage to language, the Mazruis unravel issues of power, culture, and modernity as they are embedded in African linguistic life. The first section of the book takes a global perspective, exploring such issues as the Eurocentrism of much linguistic scholarship on Africa; part two takes an African perspective on a variety of issues from the linguistically disadvantaged position of women in Africa to the relation of language policy and democratic development; the third section presents a set of regional studies, centering on the Swahili language's exemplification of the triple heritage.The Power of Babel unites empirical information with theories of nationalism and pluralism—among others—to offer the richest contextual account of African languages to date.
Download or read book Language Pedagogy and Language Use in Africa written by Lioba J. Moshi and published by Adonis & Abbey Pub Limited. This book was released on 2009 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of African language pedagogy and use in the Diaspora was initiated in the 1960s as African countries attained independence from colonial powers. In the continent, the enthusiasm for the use of indigenous languages and scholarship has remained relatively moderate as scholars are conflicted in their loyalty to imperial languages. The attitude towards the use of African languages by African leaders has also hampered scholars' efforts to create and sustain the needed visibility for African languages around the world. Needless to say, the study of African languages is not only critical to the study of language theories but also important in changing Africa's overwhelming reliance on European languages to communicate with each other. The reliance has not only affected the politics of the continent but also its economic wellbeing. An analysis of the enormous developmental challenges facing the African continent will reveal that many of the economic, social, political and cultural challenges have major language components. It can actually be said that the challenges of development in Africa are either outright language challenges or are language- based. More significantly, at the social level in many parts of the continent, African languages are now perceived as inadequate means of communication. Language Pedagogy and Language Use in Africa discusses the importance of teaching and using of African languages in the African continent and beyond and provides illustrations of both their direct and indirect use a result of historical and contemporary contacts, language planning policies and pedagogical concerns. The book contributes to the on-going discussion on the pedagogy, promotion, and use of African languages both on the continent and in the Diaspora. _______________ Dr. Lioba Moshi is a Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of African of African Languages Program at the University of Georgia, USA. She has done research on language pedagogy and teaching and is the recipient of a distinguished University Professorship service award at UGA and a distinguished teaching award from UCLA. She teaches linguistics and Swahili in the US and has also taught Swahili in Tanzania and England. She is the author of a number of publications, including "Democracy and Culture: an African Perspective (co-edited)," The Pedagogy of African Languages: An Emerging Field," "Mazoezi ya Kiswahili, Kitabu cha Wanafunzi wa Mwaka wa Kwanza (Swahili exercises, a workbook for first year students)" and "Tuimarishe Kiswahili Chetu." She has also developed a series of videos and online teaching material to help students learn the Swahili language and culture. Dr. Akinloyè Òjó is an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the African Studies Institute at the University of Georgia. He teaches Yorùbá language and culture as well as courses in African Studies. He has published articles on African language pedagogy and programming, Yoruba language acquisition, Yoruba onomastics, and the issues of language, culture and society in Africa. His co-edited book, "Ìlò-Èdè àti Èdá Ède Yorùbá" (Yoruba Linguistics and Language Use) was published in 2005 by the Africa World Press, New Jersey. His collection of poems, In Flight, was published by Kraft Books, Nigeria in 2000.
Download or read book The Power of Babel written by Ali A. Mazrui and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-08-03 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linguists estimate that there are currently nearly 2,000 languages in Africa, a staggering figure that is belied by the relatively few national languages. While African national politics, economics, and law are all conducted primarily in the colonial languages, the cultural life of the majority of citizens is conducted in a bewildering Babel of local and regional dialects, making language itself the center of debates over multiculturalism, gender studies, and social theory. In The Power of Babel, the noted Africanist scholar Ali Mazrui and linguist Alamin Mazrui explore this vast territory of African language. The Power of Babel is one of the first comprehensive studies of the complex linguistic constellations of Africa. It draws on Ali Mazrui's earlier work in its examination of the "triple heritage" of African culture, in which indigenous, Islamic, and Western traditions compete for influence. In bringing the idea of the triple heritage to language, the Mazruis unravel issues of power, culture, and modernity as they are embedded in African linguistic life. The first section of the book takes a global perspective, exploring such issues as the Eurocentrism of much linguistic scholarship on Africa; part two takes an African perspective on a variety of issues from the linguistically disadvantaged position of women in Africa to the relation of language policy and democratic development; the third section presents a set of regional studies, centering on the Swahili language's exemplification of the triple heritage.The Power of Babel unites empirical information with theories of nationalism and pluralism—among others—to offer the richest contextual account of African languages to date.
Download or read book The Rise of the African Novel written by Mukoma Wa Ngugi and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaging questions of language, identity, and reception to restore South African and diaspora writing to the African literary tradition
