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PROGRAMME Modifier.Indd 1 23/08/2018 21:23:56 African Languages in a Global World PROGRAMME modifier.indd 1 23/08/2018 21:23:56 African Languages in a Global World The cultural and linguistic diversity in Africa has been weakened by the institutionalisation of global languages as official languages on the one hand and the cultural homogeneity of globalization on the other. Indigenous languages and local values are being replaced by the global ones but, languages in particular are at the receiving end of the intensification of globalization trends. Attention to the effects of globalization on African languages is evidenced Pr. Yamina EL KIRAT EL ALLAME in the efforts to document or revive dying languages, the changes to language policies and the struggle over linguistic rights and the place of national languages in education. In a context of globalizing trends leading to language loss and the adoption of global languages, WOCAL9 brings scholars, researchers and students from around the world to engage in various fields of African linguistics so as to contribute significantly to the efforts of researchers in Africa and the rest of the world that call attention to the effects of globalization on African languages, though this in no way limits the focus of the conference. It is our objective in these contested times where national and local languages are overlooked in language and education policies and are being threatened by the expansion of global languages to strengthen interest in African languages and linguistics and to connect scholars working in and on African regions with those in other parts of the world in the hope to bring under scrutiny a wide range of linguistic and cultural factors that influence African languages within the context of global change. This edition places special emphasis on the status of endangered languages and WOCAL 9 – as with all other editions – serves as a venue for discussion as well as dissemination of ways and means of empowering the indigenous African languages in order to allow them to fully meet the needs of their speakers. WOCAL 9 edition also brings together experts on Sign Languages in Africa with the aim to address the issue of the standardization of these languages. 2 PROGRAMME modifier.indd 2 23/08/2018 21:23:58 Dr. Arienne M. Dwyer is a Professor of Linguistic Anthropology and Director of Research at the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Kansas. She has collaborated for 25 years with a half-dozen linguistic communities in Chinese Inner Asia to document linguistic and cultural practices, and was PI of VW-DOBES and US-NSF community-led projects in Tibet, which created local and repurposable language resources. She was part of the UNESCO ad hoc Expert Committee on Language Endangerment (2003-05), and was PI and Director of the 2012 CoLang summer school in Language Research. As a digital humanist, she’s created a free and open-source Uyghur language textbooks, uses XML technologies, and teaches documentary and discourse linguistics, as well as data management techniques. Creating diachronic language corpora, she also is currently working collaboratively on a diachronic history of the Uyghur language and ethnomedicine, from 19th century manuscripts to present. Nationalism, glocal actors, and technology: a boost or a threat to endangered language maintenance? We’re familiar with the practicalities of how threatened languages can be maintained, which include active multigenerational involvement, language documentation, pedagogy, and government support. But local and global factors beyond this “basic language work” often determine whether or not these maintenance efforts are successful. For example, local ideologies of modernity or ethnic authenticity may determine whether an orthography is used or not, whether in Morocco or Siberia. This talk examines the sociopolitical context within which language maintenance work occurs; it is a critical evaluation of documentary linguistics and language technologies. I make three points in the talk: first, language work is best understood in a social matrix of actors; second, that nationalisms can be both a boon and a threat to language maintenance; and third, when coupled with awareness of the previous two points, that glocal technology will support critically threatened languages well. Regarding nationalisms: our current era is marked by the twin pull of globalization and nationalisms (both state- and ethno-nationalism). At first glance, globalization would seem to favor monster dominant languages like English, and nationalism seems to foster local languages — but I will argue that sometimes the reverse can be true, and discuss soft-power initiatives of post-colonial powers. As for language technology, local tech skills, local expertise, and many more language archives are invaluable, I argue, and briefly examine the accusations of positivism that technological approaches have received. This evaluative talk thus identifies a number of paths forward after identifying the possibilities and pitfalls of the current technical and ideological context. 3 PROGRAMME modifier.indd 3 23/08/2018 21:23:58 Dr. Mustapha Ahmed Ali is currently an external expert and educational consultant collaborating with ISESCO. He is a graduate of the University of Khartoum in Sudan and the Sorbonne University in France. He has carried out research in Social Studies, Arabic Linguistics and culture. He has been an instructor of Arabic as a foreign language, a lecturer in modern Arabic poetry, linguistics and Arabic grammar, a supervisor of scientific theses of a number of students of the departments of studies at the Universities of N’Djamena and King Faisal, Republic of Chad. He was formerly commissioned with the supervision of the Culture and Communication Directorate, and then he headed ISESCO Educational Centre in Chad before working as an expert at ISESCO Regional Office in Sharjah. He has been also a member and participant in many scientific committees in Africa. He has published many works in Linguistics, culture and education. He was knighted in the National Order of Merit, awarded by His Excellency President Idriss Deby, President of the Republic of Chad in 2003. The Arabic Script and African languages The study deals with the relationship between African languages in Arabic letters and the development of some of these languages thanks to the growth of political, administrative and cultural institutions and the growing need of the general public for teaching and learning. The study covers in detail the most important African languages in Western Sudan towards Wolof, Pelepid, Mandenko and Hausa, as well as the Swahili language in Eastern Africa. The study also traces the technical development of the new alphabets derived from the Arabic alphabets by creating new symbols that correspond to the voices of each language to reach the ISESCO alphabets, which included forty-three (43) letters, to some twenty-two (22) African languages, and to the Arab African machine industry. The study investigates the various stages of the project following the computerization of the Arabic-African ISESCO alphabet in the formation of curricula for adult education and literacy, translation, printing and publication of cultural heritage in African languages written in Arabic script. Al-Waseet and Al-‘Ali in the computerization of Arabic crafts and the composition of subjects in the framework of these university chairs. 4 PROGRAMME modifier.indd 4 23/08/2018 21:23:58 Matthias Brenzinger is the Director of CALDi – Centre for African Language Diversity, in the Linguistics section at the University of Cape Town (UCT) since 2012. Prior to that, he was a member of the Institute of African Studies (Institut fuer Afrikanistik) at the University of Cologne, Germany, for 28 years. Since 1984, he has promoted the study of ethnolinguistic minorities and language endangerment globally. From 2001 to 2003, he served as chairperson (together with Akira Yamamoto) of the UNESCO Ad-hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages. Between 1996 and 2009, he was coordinator for Africa at the International Clearing House on Endangered Languages, Tokyo. He has been the regional director for the African continent in the Endangered Languages Catalogue project (ELCat) for the last 9 years. Since 1995, he has been acting as the coordinator for the African continent in the UNESCO Atlas of World’s Languages in Danger. He is the founding member of the Ryukyuan Heritage Language Society, Japan. He has published extensively on a wide range of topics on African languages, as well as on different aspects of language endangerment, mainly on African languages, but also on Hawaiian, the Ryukyuan languages in Japan, as well as Jejueo in South Korea. He has been the Secretary General of WOCAL since 2006 and received the Linguapax award in 2017. South African Languages in Education In 1953 UNESCO emphasized the importance of educating children in their mother tongue. A few years later, when African nations south of the Sahara gained independence, most of their new governments ignored this call and opted to retain the languages of their former colonizers as media of instruction. Since then, it has been proven time and time again that learning through the mother tongue has numerous advantages, among them direct educational benefits for the overall performance of students, also for the acquisition of additional (foreign) languages. Still, most African governments hold on to exoglossic language policies in their educational systems, and the majority of African children therefore continues to be taught in European languages that are foreign to them. The prevailing practice of teaching in the ex-colonial languages as medium of instruction results in poor performance, high dropout rates and low literacy levels in most part of the continent, also in South Africa. The Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa (PRAESA) founded by Neville Alexander addresses these challenges at an early that is pre-school age. For the basic education level, Alexander (2005) suggests mother tongue-based multi- and bilingual education and further requests the intellectualization and use of African languages in tertiary education.
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