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This book interrogates and problematises African multilingualism as it is currently understood in language education and research. It challenges the enduring colonial matrices of power hidden within mainstream conceptions of multilingualism that have been propagated in the Global North and then exported to the Global South under the aegis of colonial modernity and pretensions of universal epistemic relevance. The book contributes new points of method, theory and interpretation that will advance scholarly conversations on decolonial epistemology by introducing the notion of coloniality of language – a summary term that describes the ways in which notions of language and multilingualism in post-colonial societies remain colonial. The authors begin the process of mapping out what a socially realistic notion of multilingualism would look like if we took into account the voices of marginalised and ignored African communities of practice – both on the African continent and in the diasporas.
Finex Ndhlovu is Associate Professor of Language in Society at the University of New England, Australia. He is the author of Language, Vernacular Discourse and Nationalisms: Uncovering the Myths of Transnational Worlds (2018, Palgrave Macmillan).
Leketi Makalela works in the Wits School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. His research interests include translanguaging, African multilingualism and African languages and literacies.
Preface
Chapter 1. Myths We Live By: Multilingualism, Colonial Inventions
Chapter 2. Unsettling Colonial Roots of Multilingualism
Chapter 3. Unsettling Multilingualism in Language and Literacy Education
Chapter 4. Decolonising Multilingualism in Higher Education
Chapter 5. Decolonising Multilingualism in National Language Policies
Chapter 6. African Vehicular Cross Border Languages, Multilingualism Discourse
Chapter 7. African Multilingualism, Immigrants, Diasporas
Chapter 8. Multilingualism from Below: Languaging with a Seven Year Old
Chapter 9. Recentering Silenced Lingualisms and Voices