CROSS CULTURALISM IN SELECTED LITERARY TEXTS OF THE COASTAL NATIONS OF WEST AFRICA

The present study investigates the representation of non-standardised varieties of English in literary prose texts. This is achieved by creating and annotating a corpus of literary texts from Scotland, West Africa, and Southeast Asia. The analysis addresses two major topics. Firstly, the extent of representation reveals clearly distinct feature profiles across regions, coupled with varying feature densities. Feature profiles are also relevant to individual characters, as certain traits such as social status, ethnicity, or age can be signalled by linguistic means. The second topic, accuracy of representation, compares the features observed in literary texts with descriptions of the actual varieties, and suggests that representations of varieties may differ from their real-life models in the sense that highly frequent features may be absent from texts, while less frequent but more emblematic ones, or even invented ones, may be used by authors to render a variety of English in their texts.

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Modernism in Late Imperial British West Africa: The Work of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, 1946-56

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians ◽

10.2307/25068264 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 65 (2) ◽

pp. 188-215 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Rhodri Windsor Liscombe

Keyword(s):

West Africa ◽

Literary Texts ◽

Local Conditions ◽

Late Imperial ◽

Colonial Policy ◽

Universal Principles ◽

Imperial Expansion ◽

British Colonial ◽

Technical Systems

This article situates the educational architecture of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew in British West Africa in 1946-56 in the context of late British colonial policy. The analysis extends discursive readings of architecture with contemporary literary texts as aspects of what might be termed the material cultural fabric. These different forms of articulation illuminate the sociocultural dynamic underlying the migration of modernism in the postwar era, and the extent to which the movement affected and was appropriated by British colonial enterprise. It also discloses modernism's simultaneous disruption and reinforcement of the objectives of modernity, among which were the ideological and technical systems of British imperial expansion. On this basis, it is argued that Fry and Drew were constrained in their endeavor to resolve the divergent expectations within modernist theory concerning the application of universal principles to local conditions, and thus also in their aim of initiating a legitimate modern African architecture.

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