Language and National Identity in Africa [Paperback]

This book focuses on language, culture, and national identity in Africa. Leading specialists examine countries in every part of the continent - Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Senegal, Mali, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Zanbia, South Africa, and the nations of the Horn, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia. Each chapter describes and examines the country's linguistic and political history and the relation of its languages to national, ethnic, and cultural identities, and assesses the relative status of majority and minority languages and the role of language in ethnic conflict. Of the book's authors, fifteen are from Africa and seven from Europe and the USA.

Jargon-free, fully referenced, and illustrated with seventeen maps, this book will be of value to a wide range of readers in linguistics, politics, history, sociology, and anthropology. It will interest everyone wishing to understand the dynamic interactions between language and politics in Africa, in the past and now.

Simpson gathered an inspiring and diverse set of chapters on language and national identity in selected African countries. These impressive sixteen chapters, written by leading scholars, vary in style and coverage. However, they are unified by a sociolinguistic and ethnographic focus on politics and identity in pre- and post-colonial Africa. The papers are of exceptional quality and their depth of descriptions represents a copious body of knowledge that exemplifies the extent to which communities are (dis)interested in the elevation of indigenous languages of a national offical language. By capturing the rich and contentious settings in which national identity is (re)constructed, this volume offers a provocatively fascinating read. It seems therefore an absolute success with respect to the goals set forth by the editor. --Linguist List

Andrew Simpson is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics, UnivlC%