Tag: Africa

LILIEMA: Language-independent literacies for inclusive education in multilingual areas, by Friederike Lüpke (text) and Miriam Weidl (videos)

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In many countries in West Africa, literacy is characterised by a paradox: the formal education system, based on the teaching of the official languages of colonial provenance, is struggling and plagued by stagnating enrolment and high dropout rates. Learners who complete primary education are frequently unable to read and write or lose their literacy and language skills because they have little occasion to use them in their daily lives. While there is a growing movement of recognising national languages through their standardisation, their use in education remains limited in scope and has low uptake. In short, at school students acquire skills that they cannot use in their daily lives (the small elite working in the formal sector of the economy relying on official languages notwithstanding).

At the same time, many West African writers do read and write, but in forms of literacy that are not recognised as such or frowned upon by linguists and education planners. The grassroots literacies they practise are old, such as the writing of African languages in Arabic characters, or new, such as Facebook posts, text messages, graffiti and signage in the linguistic landscapes using the Roman alphabet. What these practices have in common is that they are as mono-or multilingual as their writers and readers. This flexibility entails that they do not uphold strict boundaries between languages, as done in standardised writing practice. You can see some examples of how Alpha Naby Mane, LILIEMA trainer and Crossroads transcriber, uses Ajami to write Arabic and Mandinka here.

Working together in a team of Northern and Southern trainers, teachers and learners in the Crossroads project, we have developed a  method called LILIEMA – language-independent literacies for inclusive education in multilingual areas – or, as Alpha Naby Mane calls it, “l’alphabet sans frontières – the alphabet without borders”. LILIEMA builds on the actual existing grassroots literacies so that they can be used in multilingual classrooms, rather than continuing a language-based approach to education that is always based on a selection of languages and hence creates exclusion.

You can download our policy brief on LILIEMA here. An article in press discusses West African grassroots literacy practices as regimes of writing that deserve recognition. And you can read more on LILIEMA and read and watch testimonies and classroom interaction by reading on below.

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Crossing the ocean to meet with the Crossroads team, by Kristine Stenzel and Bruna Franchetto

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Kris, Bruna, and Friederike in deep conversation

From November  28 to December 2, 2016, Kristine Stenzel and Bruna Franchetto, professors from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, traveled to London to meet with the Crossroads team and participate in the LDLT5 Pre-conference session on “Small-scale multilingualism and linguistic diversity”. The visit was funded by a British Academy International Partnership Grant awarded to Friederike Lüpke and Kristine Stenzel with the objective of bringing together researchers working in prominent small-scale multilingual situations in Senegal and Brazilian Amazonia for an initial exchange of ideas, experiences, and knowhow.

Ruth Singer, who visited the Crossroads project from September to December 2016, gives her presentation at the workshop on small-scale multilingualism.

Ruth Singer gives her presentation at the workshop on small-scale multilingualism.

The first days were dedicated to a series of informal meetings with Friederike, visiting scholar Ruth Singer (ANU and University of Melbourne) and Crossroads team members Rachel Watson, Abbie Hantgan, Alexander Cobbinah, Samantha Goodchild, and Miriam Weidl, who shared valuable information related to data management, methodological issues, and interesting research questions under investigation. Bruna, a specialist in the Upper Xingu region in central Brazil, and Kristine, whose research is in the Upper Rio Negro region of northwest Amazonia, found many fascinating parallels between multilingual regions of Brazil and Senegal, but also noted significant and fascinating differences. ‘Discovery’ was the hallmark of the pre-conference session as well, when participants heard more about the Amazonian and West African systems, as well as about multilingual contexts in the Guianas, China, Australia, and in the classic literary traditions of northern India.

Kristine and Bruna look forward to hosting Friederike and Rachel, as well as scholars from institutions throughout Brazil and students involved in indigenous language research, at a five-day follow-up workshop in Rio, August 21-25, 2017. This workshop will introduce West African multilingual systems to the local audience, provide the opportunity for cross-regional and cross-continental comparison, and set the stage for development of a typology of regional multilingual systems in Brazil.

Crossroads team members Alex, Friederike and Rachel in a lively discussion with workshop participant Bob Borges.

Crossroads team members Alex, Friederike and Rachel in a lively discussion with workshop participant Bob Borges.

The diversity of diverse, by Friederike Lüpke

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The May 11 issue of the Smithsonian Magazine reports the recent discovery that the Natives of central Massachusetts spoke five language rather than only Loup, as had been assumed till now. Smithsonian curator emeritus and senior linguist Ives Goddard is quoted with the comment: “It’s like some European families where you can have three different languages at the dinner table.” It is odd that Europe is the continent invoked as exemplar for multilingualism, when it is one of the continents where diversity has been radically diminished over the past centuries, and where attitudes to multilingualism are far from being generally positive. Other parts of the world have maintained a indigenous multilingualism to a much higher degree.  Among them are large parts of the Lower Casamance at the Upper Guinea Coast of West Africa and the Grassfields in Northwestern Cameroon. These areas are among the most multilingual regions in the world, with patterns of multilingualism that predate the colonization and spread of European languages and emergence of Pidgin and Creole languages in them. So maybe one day the knowledge of these settings will be so commonplace that  the mention of multilingualism would evoke different images and spur remarks such as”it’s like some Casamance villages where you can’t utter ten sentences without using at least four languages” or  “she’s as multilingual as an inhabitant of the Lower Fungom area – by the age of six, she spoke six languages”.

For now, this is just a dream. Detailed (socio)linguistic research on these and  many other multilingual settings that can be described by terms such as “rural”, “traditional”, “egalitarian”, “non-polyglossic”, “balanced” or “indigenous” is only just beginning, and the knowledge of these settings confined to a circle of specialists and far from being in the public imagination. Engaging in exchanges with other scholars currently involved in research on these situations therefore is a great chance for us to develop new perspectives, to learn new methods and adapt existing methods to our settings, to chart commonalities and differences between in the ways in which language is used and conceptualised in other corners of the world, and to raise awareness of its distinct features. First comparisons have already revealed that diversity comes in many different shapes!

Last week, we were happy to have a chat with Dineke Schokkin, a member of the ARC Laureate project ‘Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity’, led by Nick Evans, and we’re delighted that Wellsprings PostDoc Ruth Singer, whose research investigates small-scale multilingualism in Northern Arnhem land, Australia, will visit SOAS and the Crossroads project from September to December 2016. In June 2016, we will have another great opportunity for collaboration: members of our sister project KPAAM-CAM on rural multilingualism in Northwestern Cameroon, led by Jeff Good, will visit us for a joint workshop at SOAS. We have decided to make three mornings of our two-project summit open. If you can, please come and attend the talks given by members of and advisors of both projects. The detailed programme for the open parts on June 7 to 9 2016 can be found here.  You might find that your metaphors of multilingualism will become more diverse as a result…