The language of development and the development of language in contemporary Africa
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Kwesi Kwaa Prah,
Kwesi Kwaa Prah is Emeritus Professor of Sociology from the University of the Western Cape and currently Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) in Cape Town. He has written many books and served on the editorial boards of many academic journals. His books include
The Social Background of Coup d'etats (Brazil-Indonesia-Ghana) (1973),Essays on African Society and History (1976),Beyond the Color Line (1998),African Languages for the Mass Education of Africans (1995),Capitein. A Critical Study of an 18th Century African (1992),The Bantustan Brain Gain (1989),Mother Tongue for Scientific and Technological Development in Africa (1993),The African Nation: The State of the Nation (2006),Anthropological Prisms (2009) andSoundings (2010). Some of these books have been translated into French and Arabic.
Abstract
Arguably, few issues so overwhelmingly obsess African governments and societies as the question of development. Many would claim that it is the leading existential rationale of African governments. This has certainly been the case since the commencement of the era of African self-rule. The lack of success in making headway in the development of African societies has kept interested parties close to the grindstone. What over the past few decades has become clear to many is the fact that culture in general and language and literacy in particular are crucial to the development endeavour. The questions that emerge from there are that, what are the relevant contextual linguistic realities of contemporary Africa? How do they affect the issues attendant on development? How do the dominant assumptions and epistemology in applied linguistics relate to the challenges that face Africa today? This article will address these issues.
About the author
Kwesi Kwaa Prah is Emeritus Professor of Sociology from the University of the Western Cape and currently Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) in Cape Town. He has written many books and served on the editorial boards of many academic journals. His books include The Social Background ofCoup d'etats (Brazil-Indonesia-Ghana) (1973), Essays on African Society and History (1976), Beyond the Color Line (1998), African Languages for the Mass Education of Africans (1995), Capitein. A Critical Study of an 18th Century African (1992), The Bantustan Brain Gain (1989), Mother Tongue for Scientific and Technological Development in Africa (1993), The African Nation: The State of the Nation (2006), Anthropological Prisms (2009) and Soundings (2010). Some of these books have been translated into French and Arabic.
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- On the roles of repetition in language teaching and learning
- Cognitivism, adaptive intelligence, and second language acquisition
- A neo-Hymesian trajectory in applied linguistics
- Migrant ethnic identities, mobile language resources: Identification practices of Sri Lankan Tamil youth
- Dominant pedagogical approaches and diverse teaching conditions: Integrating CLT in a Chinese university as a danwei community of practices
- The language of development and the development of language in contemporary Africa
- Language plurality of South Asia: A search for alternate models in knowledge construction
- Linguistic inequality and its effects on participation in scientific discourse and on global knowledge accumulation – With a closer look at the problems of the second-rank language communities
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- On the roles of repetition in language teaching and learning
- Cognitivism, adaptive intelligence, and second language acquisition
- A neo-Hymesian trajectory in applied linguistics
- Migrant ethnic identities, mobile language resources: Identification practices of Sri Lankan Tamil youth
- Dominant pedagogical approaches and diverse teaching conditions: Integrating CLT in a Chinese university as a danwei community of practices
- The language of development and the development of language in contemporary Africa
- Language plurality of South Asia: A search for alternate models in knowledge construction
- Linguistic inequality and its effects on participation in scientific discourse and on global knowledge accumulation – With a closer look at the problems of the second-rank language communities
