Description
Book SynopsisThis book challenges the view that digital communication in Africa is limited and relatively unsophisticated and questions the assumption that digital communication has a damaging effect on indigenous African languages. The book applies the principles of Digital African Multilingualism (DAM) in which there are no rigid boundaries between languages. The book charts a way forward for African languages where greater attention is paid to what speakers do with the languages rather than what the languages look like, and offers several models for language policy and planning based on horizontal and user-based multilingualism. The chapters demonstrate how digital communication is being used to form and sustain communication in many kinds of online groups, including for political activism and creating poetry, and offer a paradigm of language merging online that provides a practical blueprint for the decolonization of African languages through digital platforms.
This book is open access under a CC BY NC ND licence.
Trade ReviewThis is a timely and welcome addition to the burgeoning body of scholarship on language and communication in times of crises. It draws our attention to the importance of digital literacies and e-learning platforms in the communication of critical health information in marginalised multilingual communities. Measured in its aspirations yet far-reaching in policy implications, this volume deserves a space on the bookshelf of any serious scholar or student of applied and educational linguistics. * Finex Ndhlovu, University of New England, Australia *
Makalela and White have assembled a timely and powerful volume that addresses the global reliance on digital communication. The multimodal studies from Sub-Saharan Africa illustrate the disrupting power of technology to break down linguistic borders around African languages imposed by colonization, and to empower speakers to translanguage and create connections across the diaspora. * Tatyana Kleyn, The City College of New York, CUNY, USA *
This book breaks new ground in addressing how African languages and cultures are influenced and changed in digital communication. It explores multilingual practices in digital spaces and the use of digital technologies for performing arts. This is a must-read for anyone interested in digital communication in Africa and the diaspora. * Felix K. Ameka, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, The Netherlands *
Theoretically and through its research examples Rethinking Language Use in Digital Africa is of value not just to students of language and society in Africa but to researchers interested in the theory and practice of digital communication and the study of minority languages around the world.
-- Michael Carrier, Highdale Consulting, UK * Training, Language and Culture, Volume 5 Issue 3, 2021 *
[This] is a timely book that describes digital communication in Africa by offering examples of digital communication
in Africa during the pandemic. This book discusses the priorities, difficulties, and innovative practices experienced during this period.
* Dallel Sarnou, Abdelhamid Ibn Badis University, Algeria, Language in Society 52:1 (2023) *
Table of ContentsContributors
Introduction
Part 1: Multilingual Practices
1. Leketi Makalela: Multilingual Literacies and Technology in Africa: Towards Ubuntu Digital Translanguaging
2. Epimaque Niyibizi, Cyprien Niyomugabo & Juliet Perumal: Translanguaging in the Rwandan Social Media: New Meaning Making in a Changing Society
Part 2: Linguistic and Cultural Maintenance
3. Elvis ResCue & G. Edzordzi Agbozo: Creating Translated Interfaces: The Representations of African Languages and Cultures in Digital Media
4. Kirsty Rowan: Mdocumentation: Combining New Technologies and Language Documentation to Promote Multilingualism in Nubian Heritage Language Learners of the Diaspora
Part 3: The Effects of Communication Outside Africa
5. Sarah Ogbay & Goodith White: A Network of Anger and Hope: An Investigation of Communication on a Feminist Activist Facebook Website, The Network of Eritrean Women (RENEW)
6. Bonny Norton: Identity, Language and Literacy in an African Digital Landscape
7. Susanna Sacks: Networked Poetics: WhatsApp Poetry Groups and Malawian Aesthetic Networks
Part 4: Language Change
8. Abdulmalik Yusuf Ofemile: Human–Agent Interaction: L1-mode Intelligent Software Agents Instructing Nigerian L2 Speakers of English During Assembly Tasks
Conclusion
Index
