NO ORDINARY WIND: GHANAIAN LINGUISTIC IDENTITY WITHIN THE ENGLISH SUPERSTRUCTURE A Senior Thesis By Kelly E. Wright Major: English Literature Maryville College Fall, 2014 Date approved ________________ by ___________________________ Faculty Supervisor Date approved _________________ by ____________________________ Division Chair 2 Abstract This thesis describes Ghanaian nation building through Kwame Nkrumah’s vision in an effort to understand how and where language is connected to identity, specifically addressing how a modern African identity is limned in the English language. Moving forward, education models are described, revealing how instruction differs in a setting where a multiplicity of languages are present and the unique set of challenges an equitable model faces in such a zone. Today, Ghanaian mother tongue education models are making the best of a complex, fluid situation, but spaces for development in indigenous languages present themselves outside of the academic sphere. These spaces are literary, and this work views African literature as identity development on the page. African literature production swelled in the early 1960s, immediately following Ghana’s independence, and tracing its thematic and linguistic development aids in viewing contemporary Ghanaian identity and its relation to the English superstructure through the bramble of circumstance which had it shrouded. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction vi Chapter I Building Ghana 1 Chapter II Education Policy and Language Reality 27 Chapter III The Genius of Her Race 52 Conclusion No Ordinary Wind 77 Works Cited 81 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis was made possible through the faith, direction and cooperation of Dr. Samuel Overstreet and Dr. Douglas Sofer, who allowed me to conceive a research topic with a linguistic tint, one lying somewhat outside the bounds of either department’s purview. I am also heavily indebted to Mr. Kusi Atta, whose hospitality I enjoyed in Bompata and who patiently endured a barrage of questions. Further, I extend my thanks to Dr. Michael Montgomery for the month of wandering conversations which furthered my understanding of language as a subjective object, a construct which effects beyond imagining. I dedicate this work to Ghana; may she never cease to dream. v INTRODUCTION English is a language of rebellion. Its first speakers formed an isolated population stifled by multiple invasions, church takeovers and monarchical shifts, yet their gritty, perhaps stubborn, nature enabled the preservation of their tongue. Somehow out of the fray, historical and modern; religious and secular; indigenous and foreign; theoretical and experiential, English was chosen, molded, and utilized. The Britons were able to maintain a syntactically and phonetically distinct language for a millennium. This language had an atypical ability for absorption. Words—even letters—were integrated through various contacts and eras of borrowing, creating a rich, sustainable tongue. The language gained miraculous dominance on an island poised to house a nation unmatched in global influence. But is it rare flexibility which provided the longevity necessary for English to transition from a language of the people to a language of power, or is it instead an accident of history? It is impossible to remove English from its historical moment. It owes its station at the vanguard of power to factors as varied as the outcomes of the Battle of Hastings, the unparalleled sensation of The Beatles, Vatican II, and the birth of the internet. The more one reads about the development of English, the more the phenomenon of historical causality shapes its novelty. Additionally, the language itself is indisputably flexible. And this space for accommodation, illustrated by vi centuries of borrowing from other languages and new word formation, aids English globally. Consequently, English has stuck to every shore it has touched. Why? It certainly was not the lone, or even the first, imperial parlance to greet foreign courts. Yet English has been welcomed, studied, proclaimed in, and adapted internationally. It has been argued that this is a modern development, stemming from the creation of interdependent world markets and air travel systems (Algeo 199). Participating in the global economy undoubtedly necessitates a command of English, but a simpler answer is the language’s adaptability. John Algeo notes, “Despite its vast geographical spread, English in all of its major national varieties had remained remarkably uniform” (Algeo 183). This is not due to what some mark as the impurity of all but the Queen’s English today, but rather stems from English’s inner framework, which has been set up over time. The pidgin Englishes of Panama or Vietnam feel and sound different than Ghanaian Pidgin English, but strip them of their additions—phonetic and lexical—and a frame is revealed. This frame is the modern English superstructure—an outgrowth which enables world Englishes, through adaptation and variability, to be employed with nearly seamless intelligibility across the totality of milieus. Communicating in this language is, to be sure, not a homogenous thing: . Its variety is part of the reason it is useful. Standard English is standard, not because it is intrinsically better than other varieties—clearer or more logical or prettier—but only because English speakers have agreed to use it in vii so many places for so many purposes that they have therefore made a useful tool of it and have come to regard it as a good thing. (Algeo 195) The gems that fill this English frame, then, are mined from the identity of its speakers. These people who make English their own do so by infusing it with themselves. They fill it with those words, phrases and idioms that without a place for, communication would become evanescent: these fundamentals are the concerns of their verbal exchange. This reality does not negate the absolute need for expression in indigenous tongues. World Englishes have been looked at from a variety of perspectives, but one which stands out is the link between national identity and language use. Africa is home to a preponderance of languages. These tongues vary in the extreme morphologically, phonologically, and syntactically. A population of speakers on one side of a riverbed may speak the linguistic antithesis of that language heard on the facing bank. On a continent where the consideration of history and heritage cannot ignore oppression of all kinds, the plethora of indigenous languages continuing to thrive inspires. Many of these words were clung to, becoming deeply knit into the fibers of soul and memory, because those words were the only home one could sustain. Language is the leonine treasure of Africa which has resisted foreign exploitation. Ghana is unique in that she rose to independence in the years immediately following World War II, becoming the first self-determined African nation. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, sought to create a representative viii identity for this multiplicity of peoples, but he also envisioned this identity to be representative of Africa as a whole. English played a role in this romantic unity, and that creates tension. How can a unified, unburdened Africa be created with the baggage of colonial language sitting awkwardly on every doorstep? How can a distinct, African identity be preserved and promoted without a departure from English? Thinking back to those first speakers of English, who held tightly to who they were by maintaining a generational connection to the words they spoke, the analogy to the African experience is not difficult to trace. Kwame Nkrumah did create a Ghanaian identity, of which English is a part, and the African psyche has not imploded. That said, the importance of the mother tongue to the formation of self cannot be overstated. Universal Grammar or no, our brains are attenuated to language in the womb. Before we can see colors, we are attracted to the words spoken around us, the words we heard filtered into our first environment. This language is writ within us, a powerful component of our creation, our development as beings. To remove this component, or to weaken it, is damaging. The human capacity for language sets us apart from all other creatures, giving us our mechanism for expression and expansion. Imagining coming of age in a place where nothing is legible to this most primitive part of the self is unsettling. When Kwame Nkrumah stepped up to the rostrum and spoke to “the African Nation that must be,” he envisioned a people facing forward with the full ability to manage any challenge ahead. The English medium, effectively, became strategic. Nkrumah, like ix any revolutionary worth their salt, turns the weapons of his oppressors back against them. English is how the modernity game is won; it is Nkrumah’s ace. And this victory finds achievement through the application of this outer, global mode of communication, because the internal, African voice remains particular. The language of the West booms from loudspeakers and television sets, proclaiming engagement, progress, and partnership, while the tongues of Africa whisper between mothers and children, teachers and students, elders and kingdoms, preserving that which the revolution aims to protect. This dichotomy intended to reorganize the status quo, creating an African base supporting an English superstructure; the Socialist connotation is apt and purposeful. This reorganization has yet to succeed on a national or Pan-African scale. But Ghana may see it manifest. In the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, a statue of Africa’s manumitter stands facing away from his resting place with a hand outstretched, extending into the future. The successful liberation of Ghana arguably occurred due to its historical moment, not unlike the solidification of English as a world language. There is an intangible salmagundi of circumstance which allowed for both. Today Ghana, and indeed all of Africa, still struggles for stability, in the UN application of the term as a measure of national progress. English has brought Ghana to this moment unified, and perhaps now she must look to that array of languages which set her apart for perspective and direction.