Book Review : The Languages of Africa and the Diaspora, Educating for Language Awareness

The Languages of Africa and the Diaspora: Educating for Language Awareness, (eds) Kleifgen, Jo Anne; Bond, George C. 2009, Multilingual New Perspectives on Language & Education Matters

Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/20/20-521.html

Reviewed by Judith Buendgens-Kosten, Department of Linguistics, RWTH Aachen University

Summary

”The Languages of Africa and the Diaspora: Educating for language awareness” is  a collection of essays on language and education in Africa, the Caribbean and  North America. The volume grew out of a symposium on ”African & Diasporic  Languages and Education” at Columbia University in 2006. It goes beyond a  conference proceedings, though, by including relevant research not presented  during the symposium. Articles cover the whole bandwidth from more theoretically  oriented papers to applied, hands-on suggestions for dealing with  language-related problems in specific educational settings.

The first part of the book discusses African and colonial languages within  Africa and their roles in education and language policy. The second part  addresses the use of languages from Africa or influenced by African languages  outside of Africa. Articles in this section focus on creoles in the Caribbean,  and on creoles and African American English (AAE) in the US in educational  contexts. Both parts are held together by introductions that highlight the  common ground between the contributions in each section. A general introduction  to the whole volume, written by Jo Anne Kleifgen, provides the common framework  within which these contributions can be seen.

After the section-introduction by George C. Bond, the first section starts off  with a contribution by Sinfree Makoni and Barbara Trudell, who discuss African  perspectives on linguistic diversity, followed by Casmir M. Rubagumya, who also  looks at Africa at large, discussing whether monolingual polices can work in  multilingual countries. The other authors in this section take a closer look at  specific countries. Peter C.K. Mtesigwa discusses Kiswahili in Tanzanian  education, Kate Parry looks at the role of libraries for literacy/ies in Liberia  and Uganda, and Susan E. Cook discusses the role that different standard and  non-standard varieties of Setswana play in South African classrooms.

The second part consists of nine contributions plus an introduction by Jo Anne  Kleifgen. Kleifgen discusses the notion of ”Creole exceptionalism” as a concept  that unifies many contributions from that section, and which is discussed in  more detail in Michel DeGraff’s article on ”Creole exceptionalism and the  (mis)education of the creole speaker”, the first contribution of this section.

Ellen M. Schnepel takes up the ”political and cultural dimensions of Creole as a  regional language in the Antilles”, and Shondel Nero looks at the effect that  language/social stratification has on the tracking/streaming of Anglophone  Caribbean students in Jamaica. The other articles focus on populations within  the US. Christa de Kleine writes about ”Sierra Leonean and Liberian students in

ESL programs in the US”, discussing language interference and the  appropriateness of ESL programs for speakers of creole languages with English as  the lexifier language. Doris S. Warriner looks at African refugee learners of  English, discussing the beliefs African women refugees hold regarding their own  language and English. Three articles in this section discuss AAE. First, John

Baugh discusses linguistic profiling in the US, focusing on discrimination in  housing. Then, Arthur K. Spears argues that shallow grammatical description can  foster ideas of exceptionalism. Finally, Walt Wolfram presents a language  awareness program that embeds discussion of AAE within that of local varieties  of English. Jon A. Yasin’s article on the use of Hip Hop as an educational tool  closes this book.

Evaluation

The central ideas of this volume are language ideologies, the role of English  and African languages in education, and the critique of creole exceptionalism.  Since the book collects 14 contributions plus three introductory essays in less  than 300 pages, none of these topics is discussed in great detail. Instead, the  reader is introduced to a wide range of aspects involving these topics in a variety of different settings.

The book is relevant for researchers interested in language policy, language and  education, English as second language/Standard English as second dialect,  language attitudes and creolistics. It will also be interesting for teachers  working with students with language backgrounds discussed in this book. Many  articles are accessible to students as well, and might serve as reading  assignments in (advanced) classes on language and education or on  sociolinguistics, especially for students studying to become teachers.

About the Reviewer

Judith Buendgens-Kosten is a doctoral candidate at RWTH Aachen University. Her research focuses on teachers’ language attitudes and on folk beliefs about language and linguistics.

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