Reviewed by Christopher R. Green, Indiana University
Fiona McLaughlin’s anthology The languages of urban Africa stems from a working group on the subject at the University of Florida. This volume brings together studies by scholars with expertise in languages spoken in several African nations, primarily in West Africa. It highlights a number of socioculturally important and theoretically challenging topics in underdescribed and often ignored non-standard language varieties spoken in large African cities. Contributors to the volume discuss the linguistic situation of these varieties, most often from a sociolinguistic point of view, in their characterizations of language contact, complex lexical and grammatical borrowing, and discourse practices.
The introductory chapter by McLaughlin (Ch. 1) discusses the importance of studying these languages when they are in a state of flux and emergence. M.E. Kropp Dakubu (Ch. 2) reviews her longstanding and prolific career researching language contact and multilingualism in Ghana’s capital city, Accra, specifically its unique four-language system (Ga, Akan, English, and Hausa). Atiqa Hachimi (Ch. 3) characterizes the complex role of gender and the interplay between gender and prestige in the speech of individuals from several urban centers in North Africa. Specific sociophonetic features of standard and non-standard Arabic varieties are surveyed in the chapter.
Eyamba G. Bokamba (Ch. 4) details competing hypotheses about the emergence of Lingala as a language of wider communication in Central Africa, particularly its changing role as a trade language, lingua franca, and official language of the military in the colonial period. Also considered are the roles that the language plays in music, religion, and various public domains in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. McLaughlin’s own fascinating chapter (Ch. 5) discusses the emergence of an urban variety of Wolof in the historically important cities of Gorée and St-Louis du Sénégal, long before its spread to the capital, Dakar. The chapter discusses the surprisingly disparate attitudes of individuals from three different generations towards urban versus ‘pure’ Wolof. Cécile Canut (Ch. 6) offers new and intriguing comments on the longstanding debate over language identity and homogenization in Bamako, Mali, a crossroads of the Mande continuum.
Nouchi, as reported by Sabine Kube-Barth (Ch. 7), plays an interesting role in Côte d’Ivoire. Its status as a potential ‘future national language’, given the current linguistic state of affairs, offers an interesting and promising possibility for future research. James Essegbey (Ch. 8) recapitulates the discussion of Ghanaian sociolinguistics, especially the place of Ga in Accra against the backdrop of other language varieties. The complexities of societal multilingualism and linguistic dominance in Benin’s Porto-Novo are explored by Wale Adeniran (Ch. 9).
Charles Bwenge (Ch. 10) discusses the role of Western advertisement and its changing discourse in the medium of Dar es Salaam billboards. A personal favorite is Haig Der-Houssikian’s presentation of urban Kiswahili spoken in the Burundian capital of Bujumbura (Ch. 11). The volume closes with a characterization by Kay McCormick (Ch. 12) of the ever-changing use of English and Afrikaans in Cape Town, South Africa.