Literacy and Multilingualism in Africa

Juffermans, Kasper; Abdelhay, Ashraf

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-02321-2_33-1

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…households or villages identifying themselves as monolingual at the level of language ideology), multilingualism is omnipresent through the presence of caregivers, visitors, and family members speaking other languages. Likewise, even settings apparently associated with clear and diglossic language policies (such as schools, where only the languages of colonial provenance are officially authorized), are spaces in which other languages, particularly lingua francas, flourish (Juffermans and Abdelhay 2016). These findings mirror those of rural social networks studies (Beyer 2010;Beyer & Schreiber 2013) conducted in Burkina Faso, which show that speech patterns transcend bounded codes and are shaped by the multilingual networks in which speakers participate.…”

Section: Speech Communities Communities Of Practice Social Network and Language Contextsmentioning

confidence: 62%

Comparing Rural Multilingualism in Lowland South America and Western Africa

Lüpke¹,

Stenzel²,

Cabalzar³

et al. 2020

Anthropological Linguistics

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This article explores and compares multilingualism in small-scale societies of Western Africa and Lowland South America. All are characterized by complex and extensive multilingual practices and regional exchange systems established before the onset of globalization and its varying impacts. Through overviews of the general historical and organizational features of regions, vignette case studies, and a discussion of transformative processes affecting them, we show that small-scale multilingual societies present challenges to existing theorization of language as well 2 as approaches to language description and documentation. We aim to bring these societies and issues to the fore, promoting discussion within a broader audience.

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Section: Speech Communities Communities Of Practice Social Network and Language Contextsmentioning

confidence: 62%

Comparing Rural Multilingualism in Lowland South America and Western Africa

Lüpke¹,

Stenzel²,

Cabalzar³

et al. 2020

Anthropological Linguistics

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“…Contributions to world civilization by indigenous knowledge systems remain unknown, thereby perpetuating the myth that indigenous peoples are incapable of rigorous scientific inquiry (Owusu-Ansah & Mji, 2013). I argue that when it comes to knowledge, the more the merrier, and much can be gained from synergizing with silenced epistemic voices (Ezeanya, 2015;Juffermans & Abdelhay, 2017;Maddox, 2017;Owusu-Ansah & Mji, 2013;Sichra, 2017). The African proverb "A river is flooded by tributaries" bears this out.…”

Section: Resisting Epistemic Blackout: Illustrating Afrocentric Methomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ethnologue, a notable online record of global linguistic diversity, identifies 7,111 known living languages on earth ("About, " n.d.), with 30% of these, or 2,140 languages, in Africa ("Africa, " n.d.). Yet, African epistemic contributions are minimal (Juffermans & Abdelhay, 2017) when it comes to formulating concepts for analyzing data on language use. Further, many publications in the field of literacy studies draw on research carried out in the United Kingdom or countries with similar tertiary education structures (Lea, 2017).…”

Section: Resisting Epistemic Blackout: Illustrating Afrocentric Methomentioning

confidence: 99%

Resisting Epistemic Blackout: Illustrating Afrocentric Methodology in a Kenyan Classroom

Wandera

2019

Reading Research Quarterly

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This article is based on the assumption that indigenous communities have a capacity to generate knowledge, and this capacity is largely underutilized or peripheralized in mainstream research. In this empirical qualitative study, the author makes a case for employing local non-Western analytic tools, in addition to Western analytic tools, to develop a fuller understanding of literacy practices in non-Western spaces. Through an interepistemic synergy approach, the author employed indexicality and interactional sociolinguistics on the one hand and Afrocentric methodology on the other hand in analyzing data produced in a grades 5 and 9 literacy collaboration in Nairobi, Kenya. This study illustrates deeper understandings of data on language use that scholars of language and literacy might derive through taking up an interepistemic synergy approach. Such understandings include tracking how multilingual speakers in postcolonial spaces modulate power imbalance and navigate layers of cross linguistic coevocation informed by contested ideologies and worldviews. The analysis also spotlights how local fingerprints of multilingualism and multiethnicity endure in written text in spite of language surveillance in a Standard Kenyan English-dominated classroom space. Taken together, these understandings cast a unique local aspect on language and literacy practices that goes beyond an emic-etic approach. Most crucially, this article is an illustrative resource for scholars and other stakeholders to address the existing epistemic imbalance that manifests through overrepresentation of Western(ized) analytic tools in constituting the metalanguage for analyzing data on language and literacy.

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The writing’s on the wall: spaces for language-independent and language-based literacies

Lüpke

2020

International Journal of Multilingualism

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Literacy and Multilingualism in Africa

Cited by 3 publications

References 18 publications

Comparing Rural Multilingualism in Lowland South America and Western Africa

Comparing Rural Multilingualism in Lowland South America and Western Africa

Resisting Epistemic Blackout: Illustrating Afrocentric Methodology in a Kenyan Classroom

The writing’s on the wall: spaces for language-independent and language-based literacies

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