Despite substantial international evidence that children learn best in a language which they understand, language-in-education policies in much of Africa do not effectively accommodate the range of languages found in the classroom, instead prescribing dominant national languages and/or colonial languages such as English. Further, these language policies continue to reflect a monoglossic conceptualisation of languages and do not adequately account for the multilingual repertoires of individuals and communities. They do not reflect an understanding of the ways in which multilingual language practices could be harnessed for education. This article provides a comparative overview of the policy context in Malawi and Ghana, at the levels of legislation, practice, and attitudes. Through interviews, questionnaires, classroom observations, and classroom recordings in primary schools, we highlight the multilingual realities of educational spaces in each country. We highlight that, despite different sociolinguistic and legislative contexts, there are similarities between these contexts which emerge as important factors when considering multilingualism within education.

In Ghana, plurilingual language use is the norm rather than the exception. It follows that the multilingual linguistic practices of bilingual and multilingual Ghanaians should be reflected in language planning and languages-in-education policies. The study explores the nature of Ghana’s complex sociolinguistic ecology and details the shifts in language-in-education policies from the colonial era to the present. A closer look at the policies presents two opposing models: policies that draw on monolingual ideologies involving the use of English only as a medium of instruction from pre-school to higher levels, and policies that promote a bilingual approach where Ghanaian indigenous languages and English are used concurrently in the lower grade classes (grades 1–3), with a transition to English-only instruction from grade 4 onwards. The paper argues that instabilities in languages-in-education policies occur through the effects of ideology and policy formulation that do not take into account the linguistic ecologies of different communities, or indeed, the linguistic ecology of the Ghanaian classroom. It is proposed that rigid policies can be productively modified by recognizing the reality of code-switching in classrooms and shifting focus to the creative learning possibilities that translanguaging opens up.

African artworks, to be specific, literature has for quite a long time now demonstrated African tradition and culture. One major African literary tool that has maintained its efficacy in the African cultural heritage is the use of proverbs. Proverbs have been diversely used to perform several functions in the African traditional setting. Among such functions are: confirming opinions, warning, showing regrets, doubts, justifications and many more. This paper seeks to examine some selected proverbs from Chinua Achebe’s novels – Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. Significantly, one can conclude that the style of a writer can go a long way in determining the reception and authenticity of his works. Chinua Achebe has extensively employed proverbs in his works as a tool for setting out or revealing his characters, themes and many others. This study is a pragma-stylistic approach to the analysis of proverbs used by Achebe in the selected novels. The researchers focus primarily on the style, meaning and function of the proverbs used in the selected texts. A critical content analysis method is employed for this study to determine the functions of the proverbs within the context of the novel. This study brings to the fore the very nature of African proverbs, specifically the Igbo of Nigeria and reveals the various functions ascribed to these proverbs. This will provide readers with the necessary knowledge on the very reasons why some proverbs are used and will ignite the research impetus of some researchers to further investigate other approaches to proverbs. This study has contributed immensely to the existing literature on pragma-stylistic studies and the understanding of a pragma-stylistic approach as a theoretical concept with a unique focus on analysing African proverbs. Keywords: Achebe, Proverbs, Pragmatics, Pragma-stylistics, Stylistics

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