Linguistic and epistemic erasure in Africa: coloniality, linguistic human rights and decoloniality
Date
2022
Authors
Heugh, K.
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Skutnabb-Kangas, T.
Phillipson, R.
Phillipson, R.
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Book chapter
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Source details - Title: Handbook of Linguistics Human Rights, 2022 / Skutnabb-Kangas, T., Phillipson, R. (ed./s), Ch.4, pp.55-70
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Abstract
People in Africa have undertaken millennia of epistemic and linguistic innovation leading to exploratory migration and the global dispersal of humans along with conquest and empire building. Africa has also experienced returning migration and conquest, including recent centuries of European economic, educational, and socio-political hegemony resulting in epistemic and linguistic erasure. Although post-European colonial administrations since 1960 have espoused political transformation and social justice, attention to linguistic human rights (LHRs) remains limited. The resilience of coloniality and accompanying erasures that continue in post-colonial theory and critical linguistics need careful analysis. Epistemic justice that secures LHRs may only be achieved through what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o refers to as a radical break involving ‘decolonising the mind’ of public agents and civil society. Collaborative processes that disconnect from coloniality circulating mostly among ‘southern’ rather than ‘northern’ debates and scholarship may prove to be more effective in achieving social justice, transformation, and LHRs.
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Copyright 2023 John Wiley & Sons