Kwadwo Osie-Nyame Jnr. African Literatures & African Linguistics, SOAS University of London
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2016-02-26

http://www.soas.ac.uk/linguistics/
This seminar titled "African Literature(s) and African Linguistics: Proverbial, Poetic and Philosophical Language as the Ideological Interface of a New Historic Paradigm" was given by Kwadwo Osie-Nyame Jnr. as part of the Linguistics Departmental Seminar Series on 21 April 2015 at SOAS University of London.

You can find out more information about this event at http://goo.gl/BRR92h

This presentation argues for a closer philosophical and intellectual link between the study of African linguistics and the general field of African literature(s). I suggest that coming to proper terms with African and African - descent historic identity requires emphasis in de - coding and elaborating certain self - consciously formulated linguistic patterns and thought systems projected in and translated and transliterated, for example, in African literatures in English both on the continent and its Diaspora. 

I draw on a variety of African poetic and proverbial language(s) alongside a close and detailed reading of selected African texts to illustrate and demonstrate how such an approach articulates and sustains a more coherent sense of self – understanding especially in relation to the historic situation of Africans today. 

I conclude that emphasizing the ideological and philosophical interface(s) between African linguistics and African literature(s) facilitates a truer conceptualisation of the significance of the work of the best of Africa’s writers simultaneously as it foregrounds a more pragmatic concept of intellectual freedom vis-à-vis questions relating to the on – going quest for African spiritual, political and economic rehabilitation.