Supporting Vital Repertoires, Not Revitalizing Languages

Abstract

Taking stock of the African situation, this chapter argues against the revitalization of languages and advocates for supporting vital repertoires instead. After having summarized the roles of African languages and Africanists’ stances toward language endangerment and revitalization, I critically discuss the state-of-the-art of language revitalization, beginning with activities focusing on individual languages and concentrating on orthography development. I present research on multilingual ecologies and language-independent grass-roots literacies and on strengthening these long-standing Indigenous practices, rather than on replacing them with a limited number of standard languages. Finally, I introduce activities sustaining linguistic ecologies rather than focussing on language-based interventions.

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