Transatlantic linguistic ties: The impact of Jamaican on African youth language practices

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (s4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renato Tomei ◽  
Andrea Hollington
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Practices ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
African Youth ◽  
Youth Language ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Dancehall Music

Abstract This contribution seeks to shed light on global dimensions of language contact and language change with regard to African youth languages. Looking at the influences of Jamaican speech forms on youth language practices in Africa, the focus will be on transatlantic linguistic ties that link Africa and its Diaspora. As the case studies will illustrate, Jamaican has a huge impact on youths in Africa and is used extensively in their communicative practices. Music, in this regard, plays an important role: Reggae and Dancehall music are highly popular in many (especially Anglophone) African countries, and these Jamaican music genres are quite influential with regard to language practices among African youth and beyond. Music thus represents an important site of language contact, and also serves as a means to learn the Jamaican language. In our paper we will draw on examples from different African countries to illustrate the wide spread of Jamaican influences. Our focus will be on case studies in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Africa and the Gambia. We will discuss selected song examples from a sociolinguistic perspective that takes these various language practices as a base and then looks at the contexts and motivations for the use of Jamaican speech forms.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 213-244
Author(s):  
Leonardo R. Arriola ◽  
Martha C. Johnson ◽  
Melanie L. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Burkina Faso ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Financial Constraints ◽  
Future Research ◽  
National Politics ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Gendered Institutions ◽  
The Impact

The concluding chapter revisits the main hypotheses regarding women’s experiences as aspirants, candidates, and legislators. Complemented by tables summarizing key findings, the chapter identifies where and how the book’s studies of Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Uganda, and Zambia either uphold or contradict hypotheses from the existing literature. Building on this summary, the chapter presents an agenda for future research on women’s political participation in African countries focused on the importance of financial constraints for women’s candidacies, the role of violence in shaping women’s political options, and the impact women in power have on gendered institutions. The book ends on an optimistic note, arguing that despite these barriers, the case studies clearly demonstrate that women are adept at securing a place for themselves, and asserting their voice, in local and national politics.

Historical Linguistics

Anthropology ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Tavárez
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The Impact

Historical linguistics is a discipline with strong interdisciplinary connections to sociocultural anthropology, ethnohistory, and archaeology. While the study of language change and etymology can be traced back to ancient societies in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Asia, a number of important methodological approaches emerged in the late 18th century, when European scholars who were engaged in colonial administration set the foundations for research in Indo-European languages. Contemporary historical linguistics has maintained a focus on several large-scale questions, such as the origins of the language faculty; the classification and typology of the world’s languages; the time depth of major language changes; ancient writing systems; the impact of linguistic and cultural contacts on language change; the emergence of pidgins and creoles; the influence of colonial expansion and evangelization projects on language change; and the interface among literacy practices, language change, and the social order. This article outlines all of these important inquiries, with a particular stress on the sustained interaction among historical linguistics, anthropology, and ethnohistory. This survey has two focii: the first one is languages of the Americas, and the second one is ethnohistorical and philological methodology. This choice in focus conveys existing historical strengths and showcases our current knowledge about language contact and language change in the Americas.

Metalinguistic comments and multilingual awareness: Estonian-Russian language contacts in blogs

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-415
Author(s):  
Anna Verschik
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Language Environment ◽  
Estonian Language ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe paper focuses on the manifestation of multilingual awareness (MLA) and the impact of Estonian in Russian-language blogs by ethnic Russians. MLA can be defined as “an ability to focus on linguistic form and to switch focus between form and meaning” (Jessner, Ulrike. 2014. On multilingual awareness or why the multilingual learner is a specific language learner. In Miroslaw Pawlak & Larissa Aronin (eds.), Essential topics in applied linguistics and multilingualism. Studies in Honor of David Singleton, 175–184. Wien: Springer.). The purpose is to show that metalinguistic comments form as a subcategory of metalinguistic awareness, i.e., the latter conditions the former but not vice versa. I consider not only explicit examples of metalinguistic comments, such as discussion on differences between Russian of Russia and Russian in Estonia, proficiency in Estonian, sometimes including discussions on fine points of Estonian grammar, but also implicit and more subtle examples, such as visual separation of Estonian stems and Russian inflections, playful switches from Cyrillic to Latin characters and back within a sentence or even a word. All blogs are in the Live Journal environment, a medium which combines features of stand-alone blogs and social networks. The bloggers are reasonably proficient in Estonian and work or study in a predominantly Estonian-language environment. Data comes from fifteen blogs from the period 2008–2012. The bloggers position themselves as autonomous language users and consider blogs as their private virtual space with an individual language policy. This is in accordance with the views of some contact linguists (e.g., Thomason, Sara Grey. 2007. Language contact and deliberate change. Journal of Language Contact 1. 41–62.), who consider change by deliberate decision as one of the mechanisms of contact-induced language change.

Hong Kong written Chinese

2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dingxu Shi
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Local Variation ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Government Documents ◽  
Standard Chinese ◽  
Syntactic Behavior ◽  
Bilingualism And Multilingualism ◽  
The Impact

Hong Kong written Chinese is the register used in government documents, serious literature and the formal sections of printed media. It is a local variation of Standard Chinese and has many special features in its lexicon, syntax and discourse. These features come from three distinctive sources: English, Cantonese and innovation. The main concern of this paper is which features come from English and how they are adopted. It is shown that Hong Kong written Chinese has a large number of English loan words, both localized and semi-localized ones, and quite a few calque forms from English. Some of its lexical items have undergone semantic shift under the influence of English or Cantonese. The most interesting characteristic of Hong Kong written Chinese is that a number of its words have changed their syntactic behavior due to English influence and a few syntactic structures are apparently adopted from English. This particular form of written Chinese thus provides an excellent case to study the impact of bilingualism and multilingualism on language use and language change induced by language contact.

American Sign Language in virtual space: Interactions between deaf users of computer-mediated video communication and the impact of technology on language practices

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 693-714 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH KEATING ◽  
GENE MIRUS
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Deaf Community ◽  
Language Practices ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Impact Of Technology ◽  
The Impact

According to some discussions concerning new information technologies and technologically enhanced communication, we are now in a revolution as profound as the printing press. The Internet is creating new kinds of meetingplaces and work areas and the possibilities of new types of relationships across time and space. This article reports on some ways that the Internet is shaping language practices in the Deaf community, with an interest in how new tools mediate and influence human behavior, including language and the organization of interaction. This includes the development and manipulation of a computer-mediated image of self and other, creativity and problem-solving in new communicative spaces, creating reciprocal perspectives, new participation frameworks, and specifics of language change. For the first time, deaf people can communicate using manual visual language, in many cases their native language, across space and time zones. This groundbreaking situation makes the Deaf community a particularly productive site for research into relationships between technological innovations and new communicative practices.

An English “like no other”?: Language Contact and Change in Quebec

2006 ◽  
Vol 51 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 185-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shana Poplack ◽  
James A. Walker ◽  
Rebecca Malcolmson
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Minority Language ◽  
Empirical Measure ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Language Contact And Change

AbstractAlthough the received wisdom is that English in Quebec, as a minority language, has undergone contact-induced language change, little scientific evidence has been brought to bear on this claim. We describe a project designed to assess the impact of a majority language on the structure of the minority language in a situation of long-term contact. The existence and directionality of change is assessed by comparing the behaviour of linguistic phenomena (1) over (apparent) time, (2) according to intensity of contact, and (3) against French as a non-contact benchmark and putative source. We detail the methods employed in selecting a sample and constituting a corpus, and characterize the speakers and aspects of their speech. Finally, we present an analysis of the sociolinguistic situation of the Quebec anglophone community, and offer an empirical measure of the impact of the French lexicon on Quebec English.

scholarly journals Beyond the Category

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Pagel
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Comprehensive Model ◽  
Continuous Space ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Types Of Change

This article draws attention to three general problems in existing theories and models of contact-induced language change: the problem of autonomous types of change, that of autonomous contact languages, and that of the metaphors used in contact linguistic terminology. Parting from a discussion of these problems and two case studies of contact varieties that heavily challenge existing models of contact-induced change (Chamorro and Zamboangueño-Chabacano), I provide a new and comprehensive model based on the conception of contact-induced change as a continuous space, in which interrelated and interconnected parameters dominate over autonomous types. This model is embedded in an ecological conception of language and language contact, as expressed in Ludwig, Mühlhäusler and Pagel (in press). The relevance of the early years of contact, as seen from the perspective of the presented model, is addressed in the last section and offers one possible prospect to future discussion and research.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document