Busi Makoni

Language Planning From Below: The Case of the Tonga in Zimbabwe

Arguments for bottom-up approaches in language planning are currently in vogue. Rarely, however, are such arguments supported by evidence demonstrating how such bottom-up planning leading to successful implementation can be achieved. This article presents evidence based on archival documentation in the form of annual reports and manuscripts written by administrators that document how, through community empowerment, the Tonga, a minority (a term which the Tonga do not use) language group from Zimbabwe, successfully lobbied for the promotion and development of Tonga as the language of instruction in all Tonga-speaking areas. But the success of the promotion is constrained by the nature of the framework within which language, heritage and micro-nationalism form the basis of the promotion exercise.

The Wordy Worlds of Popular Music in Eastern and Southern Africa: Possible Implications for Language-in-Education Policy

Language-in-education policy in Africa is replete with debate regarding the use of standard African languages as part of mother-tongue education. An issue inadequately addressed within this debate is the role and function of urban vernaculars which have become “the” mother tongue of the greater part of Africas population. Using data from the lyrics of popular music from eastern and southern African songwriters as an instance of ground-level language practices, this article argues that, to the extent that urban vernaculars and standard African languages act as international languages in popular music, there is justification for using urban vernaculars as languages of instruction. The extensive use of urban vernaculars in popular music has led to its popularity, and if these urban vernaculars are used as part of mother tongue education, socio-cultural relations between the school and society may improve. Despite the fact that educational strategies based on language practices in popular songs subvert social hierarchy, the use of urban vernaculars reshapes and blurs linguistic boundaries and, thus, constructs plurilingual identities. Using urban vernaculars not only provides access to education for a large portion of the population but also consolidates “glocal” identities while affirming cultural roots.

Discourses of silence: The construction of ‘otherness’ in family planning pamphlets

This article explores verbal and visual language use in Zimbabwean contraceptive promotional brochures distributed from the early to mid-1980s. Drawing on recent work in critical discourse analysis of text and visual design, the article uses multimodal discourse analysis and draws from Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar’s transitivity analysis to analyze family planning pamphlets, focusing on the discursive construction of women as contraceptive users. The article argues that the salience of the language of risk and vulnerability, which is textually and visually deployed throughout the pamphlets, discursively constructs risk as a feature of unequal power relations. The article further argues that underlying the overarching discourse on risk are multiple ‘silences’ that discursively construct an ideological difference consisting of oppositional binaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in terms of power relations. The differentiation of social groups reflects ‘hidden’ social inequalities in the text and visual images.

The colonial linguistics of governance in Sudan: the Rejaf Language Conference, 1928

This paper explores the discursive history of ‘language-making’ in the context of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, focusing on a significant colonial moment of standardisation: The Rejaf Language Conference (RLC) of 1928. Through inspecting the report of the proceedings of the RLC, the paper contends that this institutional event contributed to the construction of racial and regional differences by, then: (1) being informed by scientific theories of racial categorisation as an epistemological basis for creating a stratified local sociolinguistic system; (2) with a Eurocentric audience design, inventing ‘technical versions’ of ‘local vernaculars’ and ‘language groups’ imbued with specific indexical values, anchored to specific localities and social identities; (3) relationally, vernacularising Arabic by reworking its ideological load and orthographic order determined by a colonial economy of education; (4) artefactualising a pluralistic image of the society as an effect and function of institutional linguistic classification of forms tied to specific localities and people; and (5) resulting in the planned absence of a perceived ‘indigenous’ lingua franca in the Southern Sudan. The RLC as a relatively regimented format, characterised by a rationalised absence of the ‘local voice’, was one of the significant contexts in which the very disciplinary identity of linguistics was rationalised, resisted, and maintained.

Feminizing linguistic human rights: use of isihlonipho sabafazi in the courtroom and intra-group linguistic differences

The aim of this article is to explore the interconnection between language, linguistic human rights (LHR), and law through an analysis of the Ndebele use of isihlonipho sabafazi (womens language of respect) in a courtroom setting. Using a cultural approach to discourse as an interpretive framework, the analysis illustrates that the LHR framework is not adequately sensitive to gendered forms of language discrimination. LHR is predicated on the protection of languages of minority ethnic groups and does not take into consideration gendered intra-group differences, leading to the sidelining of intra-linguistic variation, which exposes some members of the same linguistic community to intra-linguistic discrimination. Using isihlonipho sabafazi as a case in point, the article argues that this form of language use is a type of gender discrimination that contributes to womens linguistic exclusion and social marginalization. Given that language is not only a tool for communication but also central to culture, these gendered practices of linguistic exclusion leave women exposed to a regime of linguistic ‘dis-citizenship’ or ‘semi-citizenship’.

Language Planning, Language Ideology and Entextualization: War Naming Practices

Abstract This article examines the relationship between language and war by investigating naming practices through three prisms: language planning, language ideology and entextualization. The article focuses on names assigned to combatants during the War of Liberation for Zimbabwes independence. In African cultures, names often address a kaleidoscope of issues which may include the collective history and life experiences of the individual name bearer and the people surrounding him or her. In most African contexts changes in an individuals personal circumstances are marked by a name change, which suggests that names are variable and are not immutable. Entering the guerilla movement in Zimbabwe was a significant transformation which, in accordance with African cultural practices, required a new name to be assigned to signify the entry into a new phase of life. The names assigned reflect a “discourse” about the hopes and aspirations of the combatants. However, it appears that the underlying principles of naming in war are not significantly different from those during peacetime. In addition, war naming practices have implications for language planning from below, language ideologies and entextualization.