Description
Book SynopsisThis interdisciplinary volume investigates com-munity in postcolonial language situations, texts, and media. In actual and imagined communities, membership assumes shared features – values, linguistic codes, geographical origin, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, professional interests and practices. How is membership in such communities constructed, manifested, tested or contested? What new forms have emerged in the wake of globalization, translocation, and digital media? Contributions in linguistic, literary, and cultural studies explore the role of communication, narratives, memory, and trauma in processes of (un)belonging. One section treats communication and the speech community. Here, linguistic contribu-tions investigate the concept of the native speaker in World Englishes, in socio-cultural communities identified by styles of verbal duelling, in diaspora communities, physical and digital, where identification with formerly stigmatized linguistic codes acquires new currency. Divisions and alignments in digital communities are at stake in postcolonial African countries like Cameroon where identification with ex-colonizer and ex-colonized is a hot issue. Finally, discourse communities also exist in such traditional media as newspapers (e.g., the Indian tabloid in English). In a section devoted to narrative and narration, the focus is on literary perspectives – post-colonial memory, trauma, and identity in Caribbean literary works by David Chariandy and Pauline Melville and in Australian Aboriginal fiction; narratives of banditry in colonial India; xenophobia and urban space in South Africa; human–animal community crossings and anthropomorphism in Life of Pi. A third section, on linguistic crossings in transnational music styles in global and Ugandan music industries, examines language, style, and belonging in music cultures. The volume closes with a controversial debate on the agendas of academic/non-academic and postcolonial/Western communities with regard to homophobia in Jamaican dancehall culture. CONTRIBUTORS Eric A. Anchimbe, Susan Arndt, Roman Bartosch, Carolyn Cooper, Daria Dayter, Dagmar Deuber, Tobias Döring, Stephanie Hackert, Caroline Koegler, Stephan Laqué, Andrea Moll, Susanne Mühleisen, Jochen Petzold, Katja Sarkowsky, Britta Schneider, Anne Schröder, Jude Ssempuuma, Robert JC Young
Table of ContentsList of Tables and Figures I: ON COMMUNITY Introduction: On Community Formation, Manifestation, and Contestation: Acts of Membership and Exclusion SUSANNE MÜHLEISEN Community and the Common ROBERT JC YOUNG II: COMMUNICATION AND THE SPEECH COMMUNITY The Native Speaker in World Englishes: A Historical Perspective STEPHANIE HACKERT Orality and Literacy in Verbal Duelling: Playing the Dozens in the Twenty-First Century DARIA DAYTER Prestige Change in Contact Varieties of English in Urban Diaspora Communities SUSANNE MÜHLEISEN & ANNE SCHRÖDER Diasporic Cyber-Jamaican: Stylized Dialect of an Imagined Community ANDREA MOLL ’Africa is not a Game’: Constructions of Ex-Colonized and Ex-Colonizer Entities Online ERIC A. ANCHIMBE The Indian Tabloid in English: What Type of Community Does It Speak To, and How? DAGMAR DEUBER III: NARRATING ACROSS THE NATION Thuggee: Thornton, Taylor and the Literature of Banditry in Colonial India TOBIAS DÖRING Haunting Conflicts: Memory, Forgetting, and the Struggle for Community in David Chariandy’s Soucouyant KATJA SARKOWSKY Whose Hillbrow? Xenophobia and the Urban Space in the ‘New’ South Africa JOCHEN PETZOLD Orientation and Narration: Aboriginal Identity in Nugi Garimara’s Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence STEPHAN LAQUÉ A ‘furry subjunctive case’ of Empathy: Human–Animal Communities in Life of Pi and the Question of Literary Anthropomorphism ROMAN BARTOSCH Migration, Rhizomic Identities, and the Black Atlantic in Postcolonial Literary Studies: The Trans-Space as Home in Pauline Melville’s Short Story “Eat Labba and Drink Creek Water” SUSAN ARNDT IV: LANGUAGE,STYLE, AND BELONGING INMUSIC CULTURES Community and Language in Transnational Music Styles: Symbolic Meanings of Spanish in Salsa and Reggaetón BRITTA SCHNEIDER Language Crossings in Transnational Music Cultures: Bottom-Up Promotion of Kiswahili Through the Music Industry in Uganda JUDE SSEMPUUMA V: COUNTER-ARGUMENT Cross Talk: Jamaican Popular Music and the Politics of Translation CAROLYN COOPER At Whose Cost? A Critical Reading of Carolyn Cooper’s Keynote Lecture “Cross Talk: Jamaican Popular Music and the Politics of Translation” CAROLINE KOEGLER Notes on Contributors Index
