Linguistic Messianism: Multilingualism in Mozambique

Making absences present: Language policy from below

“…In postcolonial countries such as Mozambique, colonial ideologies of linguistic value have often been perpetuated in the interests of nation-building and national unity (Alexander 1997;Chimbutane 2018). Interestingly, this has led to a situation where African languages are constructed as vessels of the past (Houtondji 1997) or of the future, in the sense that promises are made to 'develop' these languages when resources are available, but, with the exception of KiSwahili perhaps, never of the present (see Stroud and Guissemo 2017). In contrast, colonial languages retain their potency as indexes of modernity and routes into global circuits of knowledge and resources.…”

Multilingual Margins

“…In postcolonial countries such as Mozambique, colonial ideologies of linguistic value have often been perpetuated in the interests of nation-building and national unity (Alexander 1997;. Interestingly, this has led to a situation where African languages are constructed as vessels of the past (Houtondji 1997) or of the future, in the sense that promises are made to 'develop' these languages when resources are available, but, with the exception of KiSwahili perhaps, never of the present (see Stroud and Guissemo 2017). In contrast, colonial languages retain their potency as indexes of modernity and routes into global circuits of knowledge and resources.…”

African Youth Languages: New Media, Performing Arts & Sociolinguistic DevelopmentEllenHurst‐Harosh and Fridah KananaErastusLondon: Palgrave Macmillan. 2018. xv + 255 pp. Hb (9783319645612) €89.99.

“…This book opens up further to the complex multilingualism of youth languages and their use on various media, yet rather interestingly departs from the former context by challenging old colonial languages and communicative practices, and demonstrating the move towards a decolonial sociolinguistics informed by young multilingual speakers’ actions, practices, and performances across media and art forms. Assuredly, such a move puts this volume among a small but growing movement of decolonial sociolinguistics (see, for example, Dovchin, Pennycook, & Sultana, ; Stroud & Guissemo, ; Stroud & Shaikjee, ) expanding research on African youth languages in a globalized world where our sociolinguistic theories and methodologies seem to be outpaced by the rapidity of practices and language change.…”