Standard English for Empowerment in Multilingual Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Standard English for empowerment in sub-Saharan Africa is a complex issue for several reasons, chief of which is the slavery, colonial and neo-colonial legacies in which English was deliberately packaged by early British explorers of the region. In line with explorer legacies, English has been largely administered for both general and literary purposes, which have tended to cast this language as a British colonial crown jewel. Consequently, sub-Saharan Africa has used English for this limited educational purpose, ending up producing items the region does not consume and consuming items it does not produce. Using qualitative methods and critical discourse analysis (CDA) to analyse some of the archival material of one of the early British explorers to the southern part of the regionDavid Livingstone-the chapter presents some sociolinguistics indings. It then suggests how Standard English in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) can be used for mediating the ills of slavery, colonial and neo-colonial legacies.