"Globalization & the Role of African Languages for Devt."

[Stan & Sandy Anonby]

A Feb 11 article in the New York Times, entitled "Kenya's Middle Class Feeling Sting of Violence " seems to come to a different conclusion. 

"Mr. Mbugua spoke the other day at one of those meetings about the importance of reconciliation in the workplace. His idea was to keep local languages, which many Kenyans speak in addition to the country's official languages (English and Kiswahili), away from the water cooler. 'We don't want people to feel excluded when they're at work,' he said.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Don Osborn 
  To: AfricanLanguages at yahoogroups.com ; lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu 
  Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 1:42 PM
  Subject: "Globalization & the Role of African Languages for Devt."


  I just came across a link to Ghirmai Negash's 2005 paper, "Globalization and the Role of African Languages for Development," on the Sociolingo's African Linguistics blog at http://sociolingolinguistics.wordpress.com/2008/02/05/globalization-and-the-role-of-african-languages-for-development/ and thought I'd pass on the reference. Apparently it was just made available online at http://repositories.cdlib.org/ies/050219/ . The abstract follows; the full paper in PDF format can be downloaded at http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1072&context=ies 

   

  "Indigenous African languages are largely eliminated, and marginalized from use. Instead of investing in and using their linguistic, cultural, and human potential, African governments and the elite still continue to channel away their resources and energies into learning 'imperial' languages that are used by a tiny minority of the populations. Against the backdrop of constraining global forces, and Africa's internal problems (wars, repression, and general economic misery), this paper argues that African languages could be the most critical element for Africa's survival, and cultural, educational and economic development. In order for this to happen, however, Africa must invest in this sector of 'cultural economy' as much as it does (should do) in the 'material economy', since both spheres are interrelated and impact on each other."
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20080223/4fbff309/attachment.htm>