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This book challenges the view that digital communication in Africa is limited and relatively unsophisticated and questions the assumption that digital communication has a damaging effect on indigenous African languages. The book applies the principles of Digital African Multilingualism (DAM) in which there are no rigid boundaries between languages. The book charts a way forward for African languages where greater attention is paid to what speakers do with the languages rather than what the languages look like, and offers several models for language policy and planning based on horizontal and user-based multilingualism. The chapters demonstrate how digital communication is being used to form and sustain communication in many kinds of online groups, including for political activism and creating poetry, and offer a paradigm of language merging online that provides a practical blueprint for the decolonization of African languages through digital platforms.
The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics, published in 2011, has long been a standard introduction and essential reference point to the broad interdisciplinary field of applied linguistics. Reflecting the growth and widening scope of applied linguistics, this new edition thoroughly updates and expands coverage. It includes 27 new chapters, now consists of two complementary volumes, and covers a wide range of topics from a variety of perspectives. Volume One is organized into two sections – ‘Language learning and language education’ and ‘Key areas and approaches in applied linguistics’ – and Volume Two also has two sections – ‘Applied linguistics in society’ and ‘Broadening horizons’. Each volume includes 30 chapters written by specialists from around the world. Each chapter provides an overview of the history of the topic, the main current issues, recommendations for practice, and possible future trajectories. Where appropriate, authors discuss the impact and use of new research methods in the area. Suggestions for further reading and cross-references are provided with every chapter. The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics remains the authoritative overview to this dynamic field and essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, scholars, and researchers of applied linguistics.
This book argues that Linguistics, in common with other disciplines such as Anthropology and Sociology, has been shaped by colonization. It outlines how linguistic practices may be decolonized, and the challenges which such decolonization poses to linguists working in diverse areas of Linguistics. It concludes that decolonization in Linguistics is an ongoing process with no definite end point and cannot be completely successful until universities and societies are decolonized too. In keeping with the subject matter, the book prioritizes discussion, debate and the collaborative, creative production of knowledge over individual authorship. Further, it mingles the voices of established authors from a variety of disciplines with audience comment and dialogue to produce a challenging and inspiring text that represents an important step along the path it attempts to map out.
A concise, accessible introduction to language endangerment and why it is one of the most urgent challenges of our times. 58% of the world’s languages—or, approximately 4,000 languages—are endangered. When we break this figure down, we realize that roughly ten percent of languages have fewer than ten language keepers. And, if one language stops being used every three months, this means that in the next 100 years, if we do nothing, 400 more languages will become dormant. In Endangered Languages, Evangelia Adamou, a specialist of endangered languages and a learner of her own community language, Nashta, offers a sobering look at language endangerment and what is truly lost when a language disappears from usage. Combining recent advances from the Western scientific tradition—from the fields of linguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, language attrition, population genetics, and natural language processing—and insights from Indigenous epistemology, theory, and ethics, Adamou examines a wealth of issues surrounding endangered languages. She discusses where endangered languages are found, including how they are faring in a digital world, why these languages are no longer used, and how communities can reclaim languages and keep them strong. Adamou also explains the impact of language continuity on community and individual health and well-being, the importance of language transmission in cultural transmission, and why language rights are essentially human rights. Drawing on varied examples from the Wampanoag Nation to Wales, Endangered Languages offers a powerful reminder of the crucial role every language has in the vitality and well-being of individuals, communities, and our world.
This edited volume examines a number of topics related to the roles of individual and contextual factors in English as second or foreign language (ESL/EFL) settings by presenting chapters across the three sections of theoretical and pedagogical approaches, teacher and learner research, and research into the roles of technology. The book has a focus on practical actions and recommendations related to individual and contextual factors in ESL/EFL, with a specific concern with issues of cognition, metacognition, emotion, and identity, and offers perspectives from a diverse range of international education settings. For teachers of ESL/EFL, the effective recognition and integration of individual and contextual factors into the classroom may represent a significant challenge. This is often the case in those settings where native English speaking teachers work in foreign language contexts where they may have limited understanding of local cultures and languages, or where language instructors have class groups that are culturally and linguistically diverse. In these, and similar, contexts, the types and extent of individual and contextual factors impacting on language learning may challenge both learner and instructor expectations of what an effective and supportive classroom is. While such a situation offers numerous opportunities for learners and teachers to expand their knowledge of themselves and each other, it also presents the possibility for ineffective teaching and learning to occur. It is within this framework that the book presents the latest theoretical, pedagogical, and research perspectives from around the world, thereby providing a resource for all stakeholders with an interest in the roles individual and contextual factors play in the English learning process.
The book provides valuable insights on decolonising the digital media landscape and the indigenisation of participatory epistemologies to continue the legacies of indigenous languages in the global South. It is one of its kind as it climaxes that the construction phase of self-determining and redefining among the global South societies is an essential step towards decolonising the digital landscape and ensuring that indigenous voices and worldviews are equally infused, represented, and privileged in the process of higher-level communication, exchanging epistemic philosophies, and knowledge expressions. The book employs an interdisciplinary approach to engage in the use of digital media as a sphere for resistance and knowledge transformation against the persistent colonialism of power through dominant non-indigenous languages and scientific epistemic systems. It further advocates that decolonising digital media spaces through appreciating participatory epistemologies and their languages can help promote the inclusion and empowerment of indigenous communities. It indicates that the decolonial process can also help to redress the historical and ongoing injustices that have disadvantaged many indigenous communities in the global South and contributed to their marginalisation. This book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, and academics in communication, media studies, languages, linguistics, cultural studies, and indigenous knowledge systems in higher education institutions. It will be a valuable resource for those interested in epistemologies of the South, decoloniality, postcoloniality, indigenisation, participatory knowledge, indigenous language legacies, indigenous artificial intelligence, and digital media in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
As part of a growing nationwide movement to bring Ethnic Studies into K-12 classrooms, Rethinking Ethnic Studies brings together many of the leading teachers, activists, and scholars in this movement to offer examples of Ethnic Studies frameworks, classroom practices, and organizing at the school, district, and statewide levels. Built around core themes of indigeneity, colonization, anti-racism, and activism, Rethinking Ethnic Studies offers vital resources for educators committed to the ongoing struggle for racial justice in our schools.
We live in a world that sees and also contesting ideas of Eurocentrism in the interpretation of various issues, including African literatures and cultures. This book seeks to engage readers into a critical examination of the meaning, history, ambiguity, status and perceptions surrounding African languages and literature. It presents current shifts in form and practice surrounding regional, national, and "e;postcolonial"e; models towards "e;world literature"e; by focusing on African literature as a focal point for understanding perceptions of the world towards African languages and literature. The book shows the importance of wrestling with issues of global aftermaths of slavery, audience, readership, diasporic and transnational connections, as well as digital and social media without undermining the conflicts that literature presents in and on its own merit.
This two-volume set charts a cross-disciplinary discursive terrain that proffers rich insights about deceit in contemporary postcolonial Sub-Saharan African politics. In an attempt to produce a nuanced and multifaceted academic dialoguing platform, the two volumes have a particular focus on the aspects of treachery, fear of difference (oppositional politics), and discourses/semiotics of mis/self-representation. The major aim of the proposed volumes is to contribute toward the often problematised conversations about the unfolding (post)colonial Sub-Saharan world which is topical in decolonial and Pan-African studies.The volumes seek to place political thinking and postcolonial political systems under the scholarly gaze with the view to highlight and enhance the participation of African cross-disciplinary scholarship in the postcolonial political processes of the continent. Most significantly, it is through such probing of the limitations of our own disciplinary perspectives which can help us appreciate the complexity of the postcolonial Sub-Saharan African politics. The first volume uses Zimbabwe as a case study, while the second volume examines postcolonial politics in Sub-Saharan Africa more broadly.The first volume uses Zimbabwe as a case study, while the second volume examines postcolonial politics in Sub-Saharan Africa more broadly.The first volume uses Zimbabwe as a case study, while the second volume examines postcolonial politics in Sub-Saharan Africa more broadly.
Digital Media and the Preservation of Indigenous Languages in Africa: Toward a Digitalized and Sustainable Society presents cutting-edge epistemological debates, academic case studies, and empirical research from African scholars on the intersection of digital media technologies, artificial intelligence, and the preservation of Indigenous languages in the continent. This edited collection provides a methodology for African researchers, practitioners, and marginalized communities to integrate digital technologies into their lives to foster innovation, advance the documentation and preservation of underrepresented languages, and promote African-centered epistemologies. Contributors to this edited volume argue that African societies should acknowledge and embrace digital media platforms. Despite these platforms’ potential as sites of epistemic colonialism, they are essential for promoting ways of life that reflect the diversity and importance of Indigenous cultures. For Indigenous languages and local epistemologies to flourish in this rapidly evolving technological era, African communities must employ a variety of contemporary practices and strategies to document, protect, and preserve ways of being that have formerly been relegated to the periphery.