The African palimpsest : indigenization of language in the West African europhone novel / Chantal Zabus.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zabus, Chantal J.

Series:

Cross/cultures ; 4.

Cross/cultures, 0924-1426 ; 4

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sociolinguistics--Africa, West.

Sociolinguistics.

West African fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

West African fiction.

West African literature--History and criticism.

West African literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (282 p.)

Edition:

2nd enl. ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; New York : Rodopi, 2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Uniting a sense of the political dimensions of language appropriation with a serious, yet accessible linguistic terminology, The African Palimpsest examines the strategies of ‘indigenization’ whereby West African writers have made their literary English or French distinctively ‘African’. Through the apt metaphor of the palimpsest – a surface that has been written on, written over, partially erased and written over again – the book examines such well-known West African writers as Achebe, Armah, Ekwensi, Kourouma, Okara, Saro–Wiwa, Soyinka and Tutuola as well as lesser-known writers from francophone and anglophone Africa. Providing a great variety of case-studies in Nigerian Pidgin, Akan, Igbo, Maninka, Yoruba, Wolof and other African languages, the book also clarifies the vital interface between Europhone African writing and the new outlets for African artistic expression in (auto-)translation, broadcast television, radio and film.

Contents:

Preliminary Material

(M)Other Tongue and the Third Code

Glottopolitics and Diglossia in West Africa

Pidginization and Multilingual Strategies

The West African Palimpsest: Case-Studies in Relexification

The Visible Trace and Beyond

Towards Othering the Foreign Language

Works Cited

Tables and Figures

Index.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [213]-232) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-26533-4

9786612265334

94-012-0455-1

1-4356-1181-0

OCLC:

714567343

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789401204552 DOI