Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 African philosophy and contemporary African experience
- 2 The Africanisation of languages and communication
- 3 The discontents of Eurocentrism
- 4 African ethical challenges in the contemporary world
- 5 African development and revolutions in science
- 6 Africa and the aesthetic logic of globalisation
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Glossary
- Index
2 - The Africanisation of languages and communication
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 African philosophy and contemporary African experience
- 2 The Africanisation of languages and communication
- 3 The discontents of Eurocentrism
- 4 African ethical challenges in the contemporary world
- 5 African development and revolutions in science
- 6 Africa and the aesthetic logic of globalisation
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Glossary
- Index
Summary
Language as culture is thus mediating between me and my own self; between my own self and other selves; between me and nature.
Ngugi wa Thiong'oMany ideas by very courageous contemporary African thinkers have been brought forth within the realm of language, whether in the philosophy of language, language policy or sociolinguistics. We consider the Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong'o a primus inter pares on the programme for linguistic decolonisation, to which this book has a fundamental commitment.
Sociolinguistic responses in Africa and the economics of language will increasingly have to create new African forms of communication that articulate African interests. Ngugi argued these points in texts such as Moving the Centre and Decolonising the Mind. In the latter text, Ngugi makes a tribute and dedication to writers who publish their work in African languages.
Ngugi's contention was that language was a key instrument for colonisation. The overdetermination of language by power needed to be firmly re-articulated, contested, reconfigured and transformed for contemporary Africa.
Culture, for Ngugi, is almost indistinguishable from language, the latter making possible its genesis, growth, articulation and intergenerational transmission. Colonialism intercepted the organic evolution of the colonised societies’ mind. As Ngugi puts it, ‘Colonialism's most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control through culture of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world’.
Ngugi noted in 1986 that imperialism held sway over the lifeworld of the peoples of the South:
In other words, imperialism continues to control the economy, politics and cultures of Africa. But on the other, pitted against it are the ceaseless struggles of African peoples to liberate themselves, their economy, politics and culture from that Euro-American based stranglehold. The choice of language and the use to which language is put is central to a people's definition of themselves in relation to their natural and social environment, indeed in relation to the entire universe.
Currently, there are Africans who contend with much sangfroid that we must Africanise European languages like French, Portuguese or English, transmitting through them anfrican idiom, with amongst other goals being the construction of a Pax Africana in the sense of Ali Mazrui.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Sauti!Moral and Spiritual Challenges Facing 21st Century Africa, pp. 40 - 55Publisher: University of South AfricaPrint publication year: 2012