Lehrende: Prof. Dr. Rose Marie Beck
Veranstaltungsart: Seminar
Orga-Einheit: 03-Afrikastudien
Anzeige im Stundenplan:
Fach:
Anrechenbar für:
Semesterwochenstunden: 2
Unterrichtssprache: Englisch
Offizielle Kursbeschreibung: Despite its pervasive presence in everyday life, language has become strangely dislocated in academic discourse. The linguistic disciplines, which from their conceptual core largely exclude social, cultural and political aspects from their object of knowledge, claim sole authority over the definition of language. It is not surprising, then, that apart from methodologies such as discourse analysis, language research looses relevancy with regard to disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, or political science. Taking up a postcolonial and critical perspective we retrace the historical conditions that have lead to a situation in which language in Africa becomes deeply ethnicized and the major realm of identity politics. We then look at current empirical findings and conceptual developments especially from linguistic anthropology and the sociology of language in order to find viable and scientifically adequate means that allow for a scientifically adequate analysis of the complexities of life worlds. Keywords here are the fluidity of linguistic practices, performativity of signs, accomplishments of all kinds of everyday and specialized tasks, linguistic regimes and translation, embodiment of interaction, silence, materiality of speech, speech as objects, language as human capacity. Case studies are taken from Swahili, Zulu, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Herero in contexts of school, science, politics, development, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, etc.
