Vernacular Palaver: Imaginations of the Local and Non-native Languages in West Africa

Front Cover
Multilingual Matters, Jan 1, 2004 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 224 pages
Vernacular Palaver highlights the continuing appeal of local identities for participants in social networks where communication occurs in languages that are not mother tongues. Using examples from video film, popular literature, religious activity and educational practice in West Africa, it demonstrates the importance of notions of localness and locality for speakers of non-native languages, despite the growing prominence of global languages in their lives.
 

Contents

Colonial Encounters and Discourses of the Vernacular
1
African Literature European Languages and Imaginations of
52
The Case of Nigerian Video
101
Narrating Love Femininity
131
Languages of Wider Communication and Alternative Sites
164
Conclusion
203
Index
222
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

References to this book

About the author (2004)

Moradewun Adejunmobiis an Associate Professor in the African American and African Studies Program of the University of California, Davis, USA. She has also taught at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and the University of Botswana. Her current research interests are in questions of language and identity in African literature and popular culture. She has also worked on Malagasy literature in French and is the author of JJ Rabearivelo, Literature and Lingua Franca in Colonial Madagascar.

Bibliographic information